American democracy is arguably in more peril than at any moment in recent history. Not only are United States President Donald Trump and his Republican allies seeking to guarantee that Americans never again participate in a truly free and fair election, but public officials and Trump-aligned figures in the media industry are also manipulating the information environment at an unprecedented scale. The point isn’t that information disappears; rather, it’s that those in power curate, delay, and redirect it.Consider the so-called Epstein files related to the investigation into child sex trafficking by the late financier Jeffrey Epstein. The Trump administration has worked hard to bury it.In early February, Attorney General Pam Bondi promised transparency on Fox News, claiming that Epstein’s client list was “sitting on [her] desk right now”.Weeks later, however, Bondi and the US Justice Department she oversees executed a sharp about-face: she released “phase 1” of the Epstein files, but the release turned out to be little more than “a whole lot of heavily-redacted nothing”. In July, she shut the door on the client list altogether, with officials saying no additional Epstein files would be released to the public.Many have reasonably concluded that Bondi is seeking to protect Trump, whom she reportedly briefed in May about repeated references to him in the fil …
