Josh Hammer - Conservative Trends

Josh Hammer is senior editor-at-large at Newsweek, a syndicated columnist through Creators and the host of "The Josh Hammer Show," a Newsweek podcast and syndicated radio show. A frequent pundit and essayist on political, legal and cultural issues, Josh is also a research fellow with the Edmund Burke Foundation, a fellow with the Palm Beach Freedom Institute, and counsel and policy advisor for the Internet Accountability Project.

An outspoken conservative, Josh opines on conservative intellectual trends, contemporary domestic and foreign policy debates, constitutional and legal issues, and the intersection of law, politics and culture.

He has been published by many leading outlets, including: the Los Angeles Times, the New York Post, the New York Sun, the Daily Mail, Newsweek, RealClearPolitics, National Affairs, American Affairs, The New Criterion, The National Interest, National Review, City Journal, First Things, Public Discourse, Law & Liberty, Tablet Magazine, Compact Magazine, Deseret Magazine, The Spectator World, The American Spectator, The American Conservative, The European Conservative, The Federalist, The American Mind, American Greatness, American Compass, Chronicles Magazine, Anchoring Truths, Newsmax, Townhall, The Epoch Times, The Daily Signal, The Daily Wire, The Daily Caller, The Western Journal, CNSNews, Fortune, Fox Business, The Boston Herald, The Jackson Hole Daily, Pairagraph, The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel, The Forward, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the Jewish Journal.

He has had formal legal scholarship published by the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy and the University of St. Thomas Law Journal. Josh is a college campus speaker through Intercollegiate Studies Institute and Young America's Foundation, as well as a law school campus speaker through the Federalist Society.

Prior to Newsweek and The Daily Wire, where he was an editor, Josh worked at a large law firm and clerked for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Josh has also served as a John Marshall Fellow with the Claremont Institute and a Fellow with the James Wilson Institute.

Josh graduated from Duke University, where he majored in economics, and from the University of Chicago Law School. He lives in Florida, but remains an active member of the State Bar of Texas.

Tags: jeffrey epstein | social media | politics
OPINION

Log Off Social Media, Return to Real Things

police mug shot of epstein
Jeffrey Espstein (New York States Sex Offender Registry via AP)

Josh Hammer By Friday, 11 July 2025 09:57 AM EDT Current | Bio | Archive

A lot of people online have been very, very upset over the Trump Department of Justice's two-fold conclusion, announced last Sunday, that Jeffrey Epstein's death in jail in 2019 was a suicide and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had no "incriminating 'client list'" among its Epstein files.

The tremendous uproar against the Justice Department and FBI has crossed partisan lines; if anything, it has been many conservative commentators and some Republican elected officials who have expressed the most outrage, with accusations and implications that the government is hiding something about the case to protect powerful individuals.

Given the sordid nature of the underlying subject matter and the fact that the feds closely examined "over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography," the obsession with the "Epstein files" gives off a vibe that is, frankly, somewhat creepy. To be sure, it is always righteous to seek justice for victims, but many don't want public scrutiny.

The Trump administration's handling of the Epstein files has not been its finest hour. During a February interview on Fox News, Attorney General Pam Bondi said, in response to host John Roberts' question about whether the Justice Department would release a "list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients," that the list was "sitting on (her) desk right now to review."

It is an astonishing about-face for Bondi to now disavow that investigators have any such list. The Trump administration owes us all a clear explanation.

With that large caveat aside, though, the fact remains: This is just not the biggest deal in the world — and if you think it is, then you probably need to log off social media.

The midterm elections next fall are not going to be determined by the existence — or absence — of a "client list" for an extravagantly wealthy dead pedophile. Nor will they be decided on the absurd grounds of whether FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino have somehow been "compromised." (They haven't.)

Instead, the election and our politics will be contested on typical substantive grounds: the economy, inflation, immigration, crime, global stability and so forth. This is as it should be.

More to the point: There are simply better uses of your time than fuming over the government's avowed nonexistence of the much-ballyhooed Epstein client list.

You might, for instance, consider spending more time, during these midsummer weeks, with your family. Maybe you can take the kids camping or fishing. Maybe you can take them to an amusement park or to one of America's many national park treasures.

You can spend less time scrolling Instagram and TikTok and more time reading a good old-fashioned book; you will learn more, you will be happier, and you will be considerably less likely to traffic in fringe issues and off-putting rhetoric that alienates far more than it unifies.

Instead of finding meaning in the confirmation biases and groupthink validations of social media algorithms, perhaps you can locate meaning where countless human beings have found it since time immemorial: religion. Spend more time praying, reading Scripture and attending services at your preferred house of worship.

All of these uses of your time will fill you with a sense of stability, meaning and purpose that you will never find deep in the bowels of an X thread on the Epstein files.

Too many people today who are deeply engaged in America's combustible political process have forgotten that there are more important things in life than politics. And even within the specific realm of politics, there are plenty of things that are more deserving of attention and emotional investment than others.

Above all, it is conservatives — those oriented toward sobriety and humility, not utopianism and decadence — who ought to be able to properly contextualize America's political tug-of-war within our broader lives and who ought to then be able to focus on the meaningful political issues to the exclusion of tawdry soap opera drama.

Like many others, I expect that the Justice Department's recent and seemingly definitive — waving away of the Epstein files saga will not actually prove to be the final word on the matter. To the extent that I think about this sideshow, I certainly hope that the administration squarely addresses the many legitimate and unanswered questions now being asked by a frustrated citizenry that has seemingly been misled.

But I also hope that the extent of this past week's rage might serve as an edifying moment. Let's return to the real things in life and focus on what matters most.

Josh Hammer is the Senior Editor-at-Large of Newsweek, and is host of "The Josh Hammer Show" podcast. He also authors the weekly newsletter, "The Josh Hammer Report." Josh is also a syndicated columnist through Creators Syndicate, and a research fellow at the Edmund Burke Foundation.​ Read Josh Hammer's Reports — Here.

© Creators Syndicate Inc.


JoshHammer
The midterm elections next fall are not going to be determined by the existence — or absence — of a "client list" for an extravagantly wealthy dead pedophile.
jeffrey epstein, social media, politics
809
2025-57-11
Friday, 11 July 2025 09:57 AM
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