conspiracy theory

These are salad days for the likes of Joseph Uscinski, who spends his time peering down rabbit holes and poking in the dark spaces where weird and woolly things grow.

There are loads of conspiracy theories out there, the granddaddy of them all being the conjecture surrounding John F. Kennedy’s assassination. But most tend to fade and be forgotten, said Uscinski, who teaches political science at the University of Miami, where he studies public opinion and mass media, with a focus on conspiracies.

“Only a select few will attract a large number of believers, have movies made… get talked about by politicians,” Uscinski said.

The Jeffrey Epstein saga has all the elements of one of those top-shelf intrigues, with an added Shakespearean twist — a president whose political rise has been fueled by outlandish conspiracy theories and now faces a backlash from some of his most faithful devotees, as he tries to wriggle free from a deceitful web of his own design.

Delicious, especially if you enjoy your schadenfreude served piping hot.

The known facts are these:

Epstein was an eye-poppingly wealthy financier, luxe man-about-Manhattan and convicted sex offender who sexually trafficked women and girls. In 2008, he agreed to an exceedingly lenient plea deal with federal prosecutors that resulted in a 13-month prison sentence, with freedom granted 12 hours a day, six days a week, under a work-release program.

A decade later, an investigative reporter at the Miami Herald identified scores of alleged survivors of sexual abuse by Epstein and some of his associates. In 2019, a new federal criminal case was brought against him. About a month after being arrested, Epstein was found dead in his cell at a jail in New York City. Investigators ruled Epstein’s death a suicide.

An A-list fixture of the upper-crust social scene, Epstein has been linked in court documents with a galaxy of celebrities from the worlds of Hollywood, business and politics. It’s an article of faith among some true believers — particularly within the MAGA movement — that a secret list of those serviced by Epstein’s sexual enterprise exists somewhere in the bowels of the federal government, hidden by agents of the hated, anti-Trump “deep state.”

In a Fox News interview in February, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said a list of Epstein’s clients was “sitting on my desk right now to review,” with its public release seemingly just a matter of time.

Then, like one of Trump’s threatened tariffs, the list — or “list” — abruptly vanished. There was no such thing, the Justice Department announced earlier this month, along with a finding that Epstein had, in fact, killed himself and was not, as some assert, murdered by forces wishing to silence him.

A piqued president urged everyone to move on and forget about Epstein. “Somebody that nobody cares about,” sniffed Trump, who moved in many of the same social circles as Epstein but now downplays their yearslong friendship.

All in all, conspiratorial catnip.

“Saying there are files and then saying there aren’t files… setting up some expectation for revelations and then insisting that actually there’s nothing there” has only deepened the well of suspicion, said Kathryn Olmsted, a UC Davis conspiracy expert who’s studied past instances of government deflection and deception involving the CIA and FBI, among others.

Unlike some of the crackpot stuff she’s heard — like Bill and Hillary Clinton murdering Joan Rivers to cover up Michelle Obama’s transgender identity — the conspiracy theories surrounding Epstein have at least some grounding in reality.

“He was very rich and powerful and he associated with some of the most powerful and richest people in the world, including members of both the Democratic and Republican parties,” Olmsted said. “And he was trafficking girls. There’s an actual crime at the heart of this. It’s not just something that people have made up out of thin air.”

That’s the thing that gives the Epstein conspiracy theories their distinctly frothy frisson: a blending of vital ingredients, one very old and the other comparatively new.

False allegations of child abuse date back to the blood libel of the Middle Ages and the assertion that Jews tortured and murdered Christian children as part of their ceremonial worship. From there, a through line can be traced all the way to the 2016 “Pizzagate” conspiracy, which claimed that Hillary Clinton and her top aides were running a child-trafficking ring out of a Washington pizza parlor.

Truly vile stuff.

Take that ancient trope and marry it to a modern lack of faith in the federal government and its institutions and you’re gifted with an endless source of lurid speculation.

“The number of threads that you can pull out of [the Epstein] fabric are many,” said retired University of Utah historian Robert Goldberg, another conspiracy expert. “And they’re going to be long.”

Democrats, for their part, are eagerly fanning the controversy, as a way to undermine Trump and drive a wedge in his granite-firm base.

“He said he was going to release [the complete Epstein files] and now he’s saying there’s nothing to see here and appears to be wanting to sweep the whole thing under the rug,” Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who played a prominent role in the Jan. 6 congressional hearings, taunted on MSNBC. “There is overwhelming bipartisan, popular demand, congressional demand, to release all of this stuff.”

Indeed, Trump need only look in one of his gilded mirrors to see what’s driven years of fevered Epstein obsession.

“He built a coalition of people who have these beliefs,” said the University of Miami’s Uscinski. “And I think he’s learned that once you build a coalition of conspiracy theorists, you can’t get them to [stop believing]. They came to him because he was telling them what they want. He can’t turn around and do the opposite now.”

Oh, what a tangled web we weave…

This week, reality TV show star Spencer Pratt posted multiple videos on social media savaging a proposed state bill on wildfire rebuilding. In one, Pratt told his 2 million TikTok followers that he consulted an artificial intelligence engine about Senate Bill 549. He said it told him the legislation would allow L.A. County to buy burned-out lots in Pacific Palisades and convert them to low-income housing, strip away local zoning decisions and push dense reconstruction. He urged people to oppose it.

“I don’t even think this is political,” Pratt said. “This is a common sense post.”

None of what Pratt said is in the bill. But over the last week, such misinformation-fueled furor has overwhelmed the conversation in Los Angeles, at the state Capitol and on social media about wildfire recovery. Posts have preyed on fears of neighborhood change, mistrust of government authorities and prejudice against low-income housing to assert, among other things, that the wildfires were set intentionally to raze the Palisades and replace the community with affordable housing.

The chatter has unmoored debate over a major rebuilding proposal from L.A. County leaders. Under the plan, a new local authority would be able to buy burned lots, rebuild homes and offer them back at discounted rates to the original owners. The idea is to give property owners struggling to rebuild another option to stay in their communities. There are no changes to any rules that require zoning amendments or approvals for individual housing developments.

State Sen. Benjamin Allen (D-Santa Monica), the author of SB 549, which creates the local authority, said he understands legitimate policy disagreements over the new powers granted in the bill.

But those discussions have been overshadowed, he said.

“It’s become this total meme among the right-wing blogosphere and, unfortunately, picked up by some lazy-ass journalists that don’t bother to read the bill that say this bill seeks to turn the entire Palisades into low-income housing,” Allen said.

Some of his own friends who lost homes in the Palisades, Allen said, have been texting him asking why he’s trying to force low-income housing into the neighborhood.

“People are saying I want to put a train line in there,” Allen said. “It’s insane.”

The frenzy, in part, is due to an issue of timing. Last month, a 20-member expert commission impaneled by L.A. County proposed the local authority as a key recommendation for rebuilding after January’s Palisades and Eaton fires destroyed 18,000 homes and other properties.

Commission leaders then approached Allen about writing a bill that would allow for its implementation. Allen wanted to do it, but deadlines for introducing new legislation had long passed.

Instead, Allen took SB 549, which had nothing to do with wildfire rebuilding but was still alive in the Legislature, and added the rebuilding authority language to it. This is a common legislative procedure used when putting forward ideas late in the year.

Allen decided as well to keep the original language in the bill, which called for significant spending on low-income housing in an unrelated financing program. Multiple news articles conflated the two portions of the bill, which added to the alarm.

The version of SB 549 with the wildfire rebuilding authority in it had its first hearing in a legislative committee on Wednesday. Allen spent much of the hearing acknowledging the confusion around it.

Misinformation over the rebuilding authority was fueled by a separate announcement California Gov. Gavin Newsom made this month.

State housing officials carved out $101 million from long-planned funding allocations for low-income housing and dedicated it to building new developments in Los Angeles.

The money will be used to subsidize low-income apartment buildings throughout the county with priority given to projects proposed in and around burn zones, that are willing to reserve a portion to fire survivors and are close to breaking ground.

The fires exacerbated the region’s housing crisis. Higher rents persist in nearby neighborhoods and low-income residents continue to struggle. Newsom cast the announcement as assisting them in regaining their footing.

“Thousands of families — from Pacific Palisades to Altadena to Malibu — are still displaced and we owe it to them to help,” Newsom said when unveiling the spending.

Like the proposed rebuilding authority, the funding does not change any zoning or other land-use rules. Any developer who receives the dollars would need separate governmental approval to begin construction.

Nevertheless, social media posters took the new money and the proposed new authority and saw a conspiracy.

“Burn it. Buy it. Rebuild it how they want,” said a July 15 post from X user @HustleBitch_, who has nearly 124,000 followers. “Still think this wasn’t planned?

Newsom called the situation another example of “opportunists exploit[ing] this tragedy to stoke fear — and pit communities against each other.”

“Let’s be clear: The state is not taking away anyone’s property, instituting some sort of mass rezoning or destroying the quality and character of destroyed neighborhoods. Period,” Newsom said in a statement to The Times. “Anyone claiming otherwise is either misinformed or deliberately lying. That’s not just wrong — it’s disgraceful.”

Not all of the debate about the rebuilding authority is based on false information.

Allen and local leaders acknowledged the need for more consensus over its role, especially given the sensitivities around recovery. Still unresolved were the authority’s governing structure, and whether it would encompass the Palisades or be limited to Altadena and other unincorporated areas.

Pratt lost his Palisades home in the fire and has sued the city, alleging it failed to maintain an adequate water supply and other infrastructure. In social media videos this week, Pratt said he and other residents didn’t trust the county with increased power over rebuilding when he believed leaders failed to protect the neighborhood in the first place.

“We’re a fire-stricken community, not a policy sandbox,” Pratt said. “We do not support the county becoming a dominant landowner in the Palisades.”

Representatives for Pratt could not be reached for comment.

By the end of Wednesday, Allen conceded defeat on SB 549. There were many legitimate hurdles to the bill passing before the Legislature adjourns in mid-September, he said. Notably, a representative for Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass told the legislative committee that she was opposed to the bill because the city had yet to be convinced of its efficacy.

But the misinformation surrounding the bill made it even harder to envision its success, he said. Allen decided to hold the bill and have it reconsidered when the Legislature convenes again in January.

“If we’re going to do this, I want the time to do it right,” he said.

Kat Timpf wants fans of Fox News’ “Gutfeld!” to know why she will be missing from the show this time around — if only so the internet can’t develop nutty theories about where she might be hiding.

The comedian and co-host of Greg Gutfeld’s hit late-night show had a very dramatic start to maternity leave in February when she found out she had breast cancer and then 15 hours later went into labor with her son. She had a double mastectomy in March and returned to the show in the middle of June.

On Monday, she announced the upcoming break on the show. Tuesday on Instagram, she wrote, “I’ll be back on Gutfeld! in a few weeks! Huge thanks to those of you who have taken the time to offer me words of kindness and support. I love u all so much.”

She included a video clip from “Gutfeld!” in which she gave more details.

“When I came back, I said I still had some surgeries to go,” she said, referring to upcoming reconstructive work. The first one, she said, is next week.

“Even … the best case scenario of breast cancer can involve quite a road to feeling whole again,” Timpf said. “So this is the first step in that. Just so the internet can’t come up with theories about where I am, that’s where I am. Thank you everyone for all your support, vibes and prayers or however you show that. I really appreciate it and I can’t wait to come back soon.”

Fellow Fox News contributor Guy Benson, weekend “Fox & Friends” co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy and “The Five” contributor Kennedy — who earned praise for her work filling in for Timpf on “Gutfeld!” during maternity leave — all posted well wishes in comments on the post.

“Never been more impressed with Kat Timpf,” Campos-Duffy wrote. “The very definition of a strong mom!”

Some viewers earlier this year worried that the comedian’s double-mastectomy decision was rash, given that her cancer had been found early, at Stage 0.

“Every case of breast cancer is very different,” the “I Used to Like You Until…” author said upon her return to Fox News in June. “There are a lot of details of mine that I haven’t shared, but I just wanna say, you know, trust that I’m making the best decision for me and my family. I’m getting the best medical advice that I could possibly be getting.”

The assassination of one Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband and the shooting of another lawmaker and his wife at their homes are just the latest addition to a long and unsettling roll call of political violence in the United States.

The list, in the last two months alone: the killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, D.C.; the firebombing of a Colorado march calling for the release of Israeli hostages; and the firebombing of the official residence of Pennsylvania’s governor — on a Jewish holiday while he and his family were inside.

Here is a sampling of other attacks before that — the assassination of a healthcare executive on the streets of New York City late last year; the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally during his presidential campaign last year; the 2022 attack on the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) by a believer in right-wing conspiracy theories; and the 2017 shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) by a gunman at a congressional softball game practice.

“We’ve entered into this especially scary time in the country where it feels the sort of norms and rhetoric and rules that would tamp down on violence have been lifted,” said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at Georgetown University who studies extremism. “A lot of people are receiving signals from the culture.”

Individual shootings and massacres

Politics have also driven large-scale massacres. Gunmen who killed 11 worshipers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, 23 shoppers at a heavily Latino Walmart in El Paso in 2019 and 10 Black people at a Buffalo, N.Y., grocery store in 2022 each cited the conspiracy theory that a secret cabal of Jews was trying to replace white people with people of color. That has become a staple on parts of the right that support Trump’s push to limit immigration.

The Anti-Defamation League found that from 2022 through 2024, all of the 61 political killings in the United States were committed by right-wing extremists. That changed on the first day of 2025, when a Texas man flying the flag of the Islamic State group killed 14 people by driving his truck through a crowded New Orleans street before being fatally shot by police.

“You’re seeing acts of violence from all different ideologies,” said Jacob Ware, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who researches terrorism. “It feels more random and chaotic and more frequent.”

The United States has a long and grim history of political violence, including presidential assassinations dating to the killing of President Abraham Lincoln, lynchings and other violence aimed at Black people in the South, and the 1954 shooting inside Congress by four Puerto Rican nationalists. Experts say the last few years, however, have reached a level not seen since the tumultuous days of the 1960s and 1970s, when political leaders the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., President Kennedy, Malcolm X and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated.

Ware noted that the most recent surge comes after the new Trump administration has closed units that focus on investigating white supremacist extremism and pushed federal law enforcement to spend less time on anti-terrorism and more on detaining people who are in the country illegally.

“We’re at the point, after these six weeks, where we have to ask about how effectively the Trump administration is combating terrorism,” Ware said.

One of Trump’s first acts in office was to pardon those involved in the largest act of domestic political violence this century — the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob intended to prevent Congress from certifying Trump’s 2020 election loss.

Those pardons broadcast a signal to would-be extremists on either side of the political debate, Dallek said: “They sent a very strong message that violence, as long as you’re a Trump supporter, will be permitted and may be rewarded.”

Ideologies not always aligned — or coherent

Often, those who engage in political violence don’t have clearly defined ideologies that easily map onto the country’s partisan divides. A man who died after he detonated a car bomb outside a Palm Springs fertility clinic last month left writings urging people not to procreate and expressed what the FBI called “nihilistic ideations.”

But each political attack seems to inspire partisans to find evidence the attacker is on the other side. Little was known about the man police identified as a suspect in the Minnesota attacks, 57-year-old Vance Boelter. Authorities say they found a list of other apparent targets that included other Democratic officials, abortion clinics and abortion rights advocates, as well as fliers for the day’s anti-Trump “No Kings” parades.

Conservatives online seized on the fliers — and the fact that Boelter had apparently once been reappointed to a state workforce development board by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz — to claim the suspect must be a liberal. “The far left is murderously violent,” billionaire Elon Musk posted on his social media site, X.

It was reminiscent of the fallout from the attack on Paul Pelosi, the former House speaker’s then-82-year-old husband, who was seriously injured by a man wielding a hammer. Right-wing figures falsely theorized the assailant was a secret lover rather than what authorities said he was: a believer in pro-Trump conspiracy theories who broke into the Pelosi home echoing Jan. 6 rioters who broke into the Capitol by saying: “Where is Nancy?!”

No prominent Republican ever denounced the Pelosi assault, and GOP leaders including Trump joked about the attack at public events in its aftermath.

On Saturday, Nancy Pelosi posted a statement on X decrying the Minnesota attack. “All of us must remember that it’s not only the act of violence, but also the reaction to it, that can normalize it,” she wrote.

After mocking the Pelosis after the 2022 attack, Trump on Saturday joined in the bipartisan condemnation of the Minnesota shootings, calling them “horrific violence.” The president has, however, consistently broken new ground with his bellicose rhetoric toward his political opponents, whom he routinely calls “sick” and “evil,” and has talked repeatedly about how violence is needed to quell protests.

The Minnesota attack occurred after Trump took the extraordinary step of mobilizing the military to try to control protests against his administration’s immigration operations in Los Angeles during the last week, when he pledged to “HIT” disrespectful protesters and warned of a “migrant invasion” of the city.

Dallek said Trump has been “both a victim and an accelerant” of the charged, dehumanizing political rhetoric that is flooding the country.

“It feels as if the extremists are in the saddle,” he said, “and the extremists are the ones driving our rhetoric and politics.”

Riccardi writes for the Associated Press.