Random News: September 3, 2025

DISCLAIMER: Zak's Random News is very random and doesn't cover many things, and not everything may be accurate, because I'm just some guy. Go find a real news source.

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Good morning. It’s September 3, 2025, and it’s a Wednesday. I’m just here to tell you things. What you do after that is up to you.

• It’s time to delve back into the Epstein files. We deserve to know what happened, and exactly how Dump and other powerful figures were involved.
• Yesterday, a House committee released tens of thousands of Justice Department documents from the federal investigation into the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in jail — via suicide, some say — while awaiting trial in 2019.
• The files were published by the House Oversight Committee after it subpoenaed the Justice Department for records on Epstein. The records released by the House Oversight Committee appear to include a combination of videos, audio recordings and text files — including emails and court documents.
• But Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), who leads the House Oversight Committee, said the docs were the same that the DOJ handed to right-wing influencers back in February. That’s it. Nothing new.
• And indeed, it’s been acknowledged that many files from the Justice Department's investigations into Epstein have already been made public.
• Prior to the release of the already-seen Epstein documents, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, led by Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), met with Epstein accusers on Capitol Hill. Those survivors will be holding a news conference today.
• Meanwhile, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) filed a discharge petition yesterday to force a floor vote compelling the Justice Department to release all the files from the Epstein case.
• Massie and his Democratic co-author, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) already began collecting signatures for their Epstein resolution. They need at least 218 signatures — half the members of the House — to force a vote, and Khanna said he is certain that all 212 Democrats will sign on, along with at least six Republicans.
• Donnie Dump and his team are not at all happy about this.
• A statement from the Dump admin read, “Helping Thomas Massie and Liberal Democrats with their attention-seeking, while the DOJ is fully supporting a more comprehensive file release effort from the Oversight Committee, would be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration.”
• What? Why is releasing the Epstein info hostile to Donnie Dump? Wouldn’t he want them released to exonerate himself if he’s innocent? What could be in there that would hurt Dump so badly?
• We’ll be keeping an eye on today’s news conference with the victims of Epstein and his close friends who sexually abused them.
• Let’s move on.
• Another big loss for Dumpy yesterday as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that Dump unlawfully invoked a centuries-old wartime law to swiftly deport Venezuelan migrants, blocking one of his administration’s most contentious immigration initiatives and teeing up a legal battle sure to end up before the Supreme Court.
• They rejected Dump’s use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to remove alleged members of the Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua gang, concluding that their presence in the country did not amount to the type of invasion or “predatory incursion” lawmakers envisioned when they drafted the statute allowing fast-tracked deportations.
• Correct, obviously.
• Pertinent note: the 5th Circuit is perhaps the nation’s most conservative appellate court. Their ruling follows a string of similar judgments from lower courts across the country that have almost uniformly rejected Dump’s invocation of the law on similar grounds.
• Fuck that guy and his illegal dictator shit.
• Let’s move on to some news from the War Desk.
• Yesterday, the U.S. military struck a drug-carrying boat hailing from Venezuela, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
• I’m surprised our military wasn’t too busy arresting construction workers and landscapers inside our own country.
• Dump’s quote on the strike? He said the military had "shot out" a boat. I’m serious.
• Details on the strike, including who operated the vessel, remain sparse. A senior defense official said the U.S. had conducted a "precision strike" against the vessel.
• The strike came after the U.S. confirmed last month that the Navy would boost its presence near Venezuela, deploying three warships to the waters off the South American country as part of an anti-drug cartel mission.
• Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro called the ships an "extravagant, unjustifiable, immoral and absolutely criminal and bloody threat" and deployed military forces to the country's coastline, vowing to defend against any possible U.S. attack.
• As of yet, the U.S. has not indicated it plans to strike Venezuela's government. So that’s nice, I guess.
• However, Dump has accused Maduro's government — a longtime U.S. foe — of working with drug cartels to traffic narcotics to the United States.
• If you want to make some dough, just go arrest Maduro. Attorney General Pam Bondi recently doubled the reward for Maduro's arrest to $50 million. I guess we’re doing bounties now.
• Let’s just move on.
• Ding-dong ditch is a stupid thing to do. I did it when I was a little kid. It’s rude and childish and not funny.
• That being said, it’s also not a reason to get killed.
• Gonzalo Leon Jr. has been charged with murder in the deadly shooting of an 11-year-old Texas boy. Leon was waiting in the shadows as the child and his cousin ding-dong ditched his Houston home. The suspect followed the boys as they ran away before he opened fire.
• The boy, Julian Guzman, was wounded when police arrived at the scene and taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead on Sunday.
• Leon, 42, is scheduled to appear in court today.
• Moving on.
• Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ordered a major makeover of Google's search engine in a crackdown aimed at curbing the corrosive power of an illegal monopoly, but rebuffed the U.S. government's request to break up the company.
• Mehta’s decision will likely ripple across the technological landscape at a time when the industry is being reshaped by artificial intelligence breakthroughs — including conversational "answer engines" as companies like ChatGPT and Perplexity try to upend Google's long-held position as the internet's main gateway.
• The judge stopped short of banning the multi-billion dollar deals that Google has been making for years to lock in its search engine as the default on smartphones, personal computers, and other devices.
• Those deals — involving payments of more than $26 billion annually — were a focal point of a nearly five-year-old antitrust case brought by the U.S. Justice Department.
• Mehta also rejected the Justice Department's effort to force Google to sell its popular Chrome browser, concluding the request was a bridge too far. But he is ordering Google to give its current and would-be rivals access to some of its search engine's data stockpiled from trillions of queries that helped to continually improve the quality of its search results.
• This is pretty interesting and will definitely have an impact our all of our Internet experiences moving forward.
• Let’s move on with a little note from the Justice Desk.
• It is exceptionally rare for federal grand juries to reject proposed charges. There’s a very low evidentiary bar for indictment, and the Justice Department's policy has been to only pursue cases when there is sufficient evidence to both secure and sustain a conviction.
• I believe the track record of federal grand jury indictments used to be around 99%.
• But in at least four such instances in the past week, a grand jury denied an indictment in the District of Columbia.
• How rare is this?
• Former federal prosecutor Brendan Ballou, who served in the U.S. Attorney's Office for in D.C. until January 2025, said, ”Not only have I never heard of this happening, I've never heard of a prosecutor who's heard of this happening.”
• This is what happens when you fill government departments with unqualified people as Dump has done. Think about it: many of the important roles in his cabinet have gone to Fox News hosts or social media influencers.
• Ballou continued, "The office's failure — again and again — to secure indictments suggests that the administration has absolutely destroyed its credibility with jurors.”
• The person in charge of said prosecutions is D.C. U.S. Attorney — and yes, former Fox News host — Jeanine Pirro.
• She said, "A Washington D.C. grand jury refused to indict someone who threatened to kill the President of the United States. Her intent was clear, traveling through five states to do so. She even confirmed the same to the US Secret Service. This is the essence of a politicized jury. The system here is broken on many levels. Instead of the outrage that should be engendered by a specific threat to kill the president, the grand jury in DC refuses to even let the judicial process begin."
• Yes. Because you fucking suck and have no qualifications for the job that was handed to you.
• And now, The Weather: “The Train (King's Cross)” by Blood Orange ft. Caroline Polachek
• Let’s do a chart, or rather a list. A list is a chart with no meaning behind it.
• In 2019, Pitchfork published a list of the best songs of the ‘80s. I was prepared to immediately decide this list was shit, but upon reading it, I have determined that it may be shit but i’s less shitty than I’d assumed it would be.
• It’s still definitely not my list of the best of that decade, but it’s alright. I’ve seen many worse.
• 1. Purple Rain (Prince and the Revolution). 2. Wanna Be Startin' Somethin’ (Michael Jackson). 3. Straight Outta Compton (N.W.A.). 4. Blue Monday (New Order). 5. Fight the Power (Public Enemy). 6. Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) (Kate Bush). 7. Love Will Tear Us Apart (Joy Division). 8. Once in a Lifetime (Talking Heads). 9. The Message (Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five). 10. How Soon Is Now? (The Smiths). 11. When Doves Cry (Prnce). 12. Just :Like Heaven (The Cure). 13. Billie Jean (Michael Jackson). 14. There Is a Light That Never Goes Out (The Smiths). 15. Teen Age Riot (Sonic Youth). 16. Waiting Room (Fugazi). 17. Into the Groove (Madonna). 18. Sexual Healing (Marvin Gaye). 19. Paid in Full (Eric B. & Rakim). 20. I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me) (Whitney Houston)
• From the Sports Desk… yes, NFL football starts tomorrow. But meanwhile, there’s a U.S. Open tennis thing.
• In the Men’s tourney, 7-seed Novak Djokovic will face 2-seed Carlos Alcaraz in the semifinals.
• In the Women’s, top-seed Aryna Sabalenka will face 4-seed American Jessica Pegula.
• Other semifinal matches are TBA for now.
• Today in history… Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa defeats Sextus Pompey, ending Pompeian resistance to the Second Triumvirate (36 BC). San Marino, one of the smallest nations in the world and the world's oldest republic still in existence, is founded (301). Richard I of England — aka Richard the Lionheart — is crowned at Westminster (1189). During the Battle of Cooch's Bridge, the Flag of the United States is flown in battle for the first time (1777). Future abolitionist Frederick Douglass escapes from slavery (1838). Malcolm Campbell reaches a speed of 304.331 miles per hour on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, becoming the first person to drive an automobile over 300 mph (1935). France, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia declare war on Germany after the invasion of Poland, forming the Allied nations (1939). Qatar becomes an independent state (1971). The American ‘Viking 2’ spacecraft lands at Utopia Planitia on Mars (1976). The U.S. and China, together responsible for 40% of the world's carbon emissions, both formally ratify the Paris global climate agreement (2016).
• September 3 is the birthday of businessman George Hearst (1820), engineer/businessman Ferdinand Porsche (1875), physicist Carl David Anderson (1905), actress Kitty Carlisle (1910), pianist/composer Memphis Slim (1915), mafia boss Whitey Bulger (1929), singer-songwriter/guitarist Freddie King (1934), singer-songwriter Al Jardine (1942), singer-songwriter/bassist Dug Pinnick (1950), singer-songwriter/guitarist Steve Jones (1955), actor Steve Schirripa (1957), journalist Malcolm Gladwell (1963), MTV veejay Adam Curry (1964), actor Charlie Sheen (1965), comedian John Fugelsang (1969), NBA player Damon Stoudamire (1973), NFL player Mason Crosby (1984), and snowboarder Shaun White (1986).

I’d probably have more news to throw your way, but I’m out of time. I have other things to do, you see. Enjoy your day.