At 22 years old, Jess Michaels was thriving. She was finding success as a dancer and model in New York City. Then, in 1991, she met Jeffrey Epstein. Jess Michaels was sexually assaulted by Epstein and it destroyed her stability, her career and her health. After doing the work to begin healing from this trauma, she has found renewed purpose as an advocate alongside other survivors of Epstein's abuse. The day after excerpts from Epstein’s 50th birthday book were made public, Jess and her lawyer, Jennifer Freeman, joined Nicolle Wallace to call out the decades of institutional cowardice, and with a warning for elected leaders: Jess and her fellow survivors are not going away, and they are not going to stop until they get accountability, truth and justice.

Former Illinois governor Jim Edgar, a popular two-term Republican credited with guiding the state into a period of greater financial stability in the 1990s, died on Sunday, according to his family. He was 79. Edgar died from complications related to his treatment for pancreatic cancer, his family said in a statement. He had disclosed his cancer diagnosis earlier this year.

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A former state legislator who was Illinois secretary of state for a decade, Edgar was elected governor in 1990. The moderate Republican easily won re-election, including winning heavily Democratic Cook county, where Chicago is located.

He remained a party statesman and adviser, and grew uneasy with the Republican party’s shift to the right. Edgar was among high-profile Republicans who did not support Donald Trump’s presidency, joining a campaign to support Kamala Harris’s bid for president last year called Republicans for Harris.

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“By any standard, he was a Republican whose integrity guided his time in office and who managed one of the most successful periods in Illinois state government,” Bob Kustra, who served as Edgar’s lieutenant governor, said in a statement.

JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, said on Sunday that flags in the state would fly at half-staff in Edgar’s honor.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/14/jim-edgar-illinois-governor-death