Zamora, a 36-year-old Army veteran, has nothing good to say.

“The laws. All the rights taken away from women. The stuff with ICE,” Zamora said, ticking off her frustrations as she stopped outside the post office in the Central Valley community of Los Banos. “Why are they going after people working on farms when they’re supposed to be chasing violent criminals?”

Medeiros, by contrast, is delighted Trump replaced Joe Biden. “He wasn’t mentally fit,” Medeiros said of the elderly ex-president. “There was something wrong with him from the very beginning.”

Despite all that, the two do share one belief: Both say the government should cough up every last bit of information it has on Jeffrey Epstein, his sordid misdeeds and the powerful associates who moved in his aberrant orbit.

Trump “did his whole campaign on releasing the Epstein files,” Zamora said. “And now he’s trying to change the subject. ‘Oh, it’s a ‘hoax’ … ‘Oh, you guys are still talking about that creep?’ And yet there’s pictures throughout the years of him with that creep.”

Medeiros, 56, echoed the sentiment.

Trump and his fellow Republicans “put themselves into this predicament because they kept talking constantly” about the urgency of unsealing records in Epstein’s sex-trafficking case — until they took control of the Justice Department and the rest of Washington. “Now,” she said, “they’re backpedaling.”

Medeiros paused outside the engineering firm where she works in the Central Valley, in Newman, on a tree-lined street adorned with star-spangled banners honoring local servicemen and women.

“Obviously there were minors involved” in Epstein’s crimes, she said, and if Trump is somehow implicated “then he needs to go down as well.”

Years after being found dead in a Manhattan prison cell — killed by his own hand, according to authorities — Epstein appears to have done the near-impossible in this deeply riven nation. He’s united Democrats, Republicans and independents around a call to reveal, once and for all, everything that’s known about his case.

“He’s dead now, but if people were involved they should be prosecuted,” said Joe Toscano, a 69-year-old Los Banos retiree and unaffiliated voter who last year supported Trump’s return to the White House. “Bring it all out there. Make it public.”

California’s 13th Congressional District, where Zamora, Medeiros and Toscano all live, is arguably the most closely fought political terrain in America. Sprawling through California’s midriff, from the far reaches of the San Francisco Bay Area to the southern edge of the San Joaquin Valley, it’s farm country: flat, fertile and crossed-hatched with canals, rail lines and thruways with utilitarian names such as Road No. 32 and Avenue 18½.

The myriad small towns are brief interludes amid the dairy and poultry farms and lush carpeting of vegetables, fruit and nut trees that stretch to the hazy-brown horizon. The most populous city, Merced, has fewer than 100,000 residents. (Modesto, with a population of around 220,000, is split between the 5th and 13th districts.)

Democratic Rep. Adam Gray was elected in November in the closest House race in the country, beating the Republican incumbent, John Duarte, by 187 votes out of nearly 211,000 cast. The squeaker was a rematch and nearly a rerun. Two years prior, Duarte defeated Gray by fewer than 600 votes out of nearly 134,000 cast.

Not surprisingly, both parties have made the 13th District a top target in 2026; handicappers rate the contest a toss-up, even as the field sorts itself out. (Duarte has said he would not run again.)

The midterm election is a long way off, so it’s impossible to say how the Epstein controversy will play out politically. But there is, at the least, a baseline expectation of transparency, a view that was repeatedly expressed in conversations with three dozen voters across the district.

Zachery Ramos, a 25-year-old independent, is the founder of the Gustine Traveling Library, which promotes learning and literacy throughout the Central Valley. Its storefront, painted with polka dots and decorated with giant butterflies, sits like a cheery oasis in Gustine’s four-block downtown, a riot of green spilling from the planter boxes out front.

Inside, the walls were filled with commendations and newspaper clippings celebrating Ramos’ good works. As a nonprofit, he said, “we have to have everything out there. All the books. Everything.”

Epstein, he suggested, should be treated no differently.

“When it comes to something as serious as that, with what may or may not have taken place on his private island, with his girlfriend” — convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell — “I do think it should all be out in the open,” Ramos said. “If you’re not afraid of your name being in [the files], especially when you’re dealing with minors being assaulted, it should 100% be made public.”

Ed, a 42-year-old Democrat who manages a warehouse operation in Patterson, noted that Trump released the government’s long-secret files on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., even though King’s family objected. (Like several of those interviewed, he declined to give his last name, to avoid being hassled by readers who don’t like what he had to say.)

Why, Ed wondered, shouldn’t the Epstein files come to light? “It wasn’t just Trump,” he said. “It was a lot of Republicans in Congress that said, ‘Hey, we want to get these files out there.’ And I believe if Kamala [Harris] had won, they would be beating her down, demanding she do so.”

He smacked a fist in his palm, to emphasize the point.

Sue, a Madera Republican and no fan of Trump, expressed her feelings in staccato bursts of fury.

“Apparently the women years ago said who was doing what, but nobody listens to the women,” said the 75-year-old retiree. “Release it all! Absolutely! You play, you pay, buddy.”

Even those who dismissed the importance of Epstein and his crimes said the government should hold nothing back — if only to erase doubts and lay the issue to rest.

Epstein “is gone and I don’t really care if they release the files or not,” said Diane Nunes, a 74-year-old Republican who keeps the books for her family farm, which lies halfway between Los Banos and Gustine. “But they probably should, because a lot of people are waiting for that.”

Patrick, a construction contractor, was more worked up about “pretty boy” Gavin Newsom and “Nazi Pelosi” — “yes, that’s what I call her” — than anything that might be lurking in the Epstein files. “When the cat is dead, you don’t pick it up and pet it. Right?” He motioned to the pavement, baking as the temperature in Patterson climbed into the low 90s.

“It’s over with,” the 61-year-old Republican said of Epstein and his villainy. “Move on.”

At least, that would be his preference. But to “shut everybody up, absolutely, yeah, they should release them,” Patrick said. “Otherwise, we’re all going to be speculating forever.”

Or at least until the polls close in November 2026.

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In a hotel ballroom in Seattle, at fancy homes in California and at stops in Illinois and Wisconsin over the past week, Biden has been betting that reminding voters about Trump’s presidency and highlighting his Republican opponent’s latest campaign statements will work to the Democrat’s advantage.

At a Seattle fundraiser Friday night, Biden brought up Trump’s recent interview with Time magazine in which Trump said states should be left to determine whether to prosecute women for abortions or to monitor their pregnancies.

“I really urge you to read it,” Biden said.

Biden, who headlined another Seattle fundraiser Saturday before returning to the East Coast, has plenty of other Trump material to draw from, too.

The president highlights how Trump has promised, if elected, to be “a dictator on Day 1”, how he has suggested the United States would not necessarily defend allies from aggression and how he has pledged to “totally obliterate the deep state” in the federal bureaucracy, which he blames for blocking his first-term agenda.

“And he said a whole lot more,” Biden said during a Chicago appearance. “But the bad news is he means what he says. He means what he says. Unless you think I’m kidding, just think back to the 6th of January. This guy means what he says,” referring to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Biden wants the 2024 election to be a referendum on Trump’s record and plans, but he also wants voters to look favorably on his own policies and actions.

Biden and his allies think the country needs reminding about Trump’s tenure and his outlandish and often concerning statements, particularly because the Republican is no longer ubiquitous on X, formerly Twitter, nor is he in front of television cameras as often as he once was.

“Chaos is nothing new for Trump,” Biden said in Chicago. “His presidency was chaos. Trump is trying to make the — the country forget about the dark and unsettling things that he did when he was president. Well, we’re going to not let them forget.”

Biden frequently highlights Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and how he stood by when supporters violently stormed the Capitol as Congress met to certify his loss to Biden. He also points to Trump separating children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border, tax cuts the Republican pushed through that benefited corporations and the wealthy and his repeated efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act.

Biden’s barbs have been getting sharper of late.

He opened his Seattle fundraiser on Friday night by telling donors, “Thank you for the warm welcome. Please keep it down, because Donald Trump is sleeping. Sleepy Don.” That was a riff off of news reports that the former president has dozed off during his criminal trial in a New York courtroom. Trump has pleaded not guilty to charges in a hush money scheme to illegally influence the 2016 presidential election.

Biden also talks about Trump’s admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his self-described “love letters” with Kim Jong Un, the authoritarian leader of North Korea.

Biden frequently jabs at Trump for wondering aloud during the COVID-19 pandemic whether disinfectants could be injected or ingested to fight the virus. “That bleach he didn’t inject in his body; he just put it in his hair,” Biden says to laughter every time. “But, look, he’s got more hair than I do.”

Trump’s campaign said in a statement that “their records speak for themselves. President Trump created the most secure border in history and peace in the world. President Trump was the first president in modern history not to enter the U.S. in any new wars. Joe Biden’s weakness has led to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, an immigrant invasion of our border, anti-Semitic protests on our college campuses, and crime and chaos in every American city.”

Trump doesn’t hesitate to criticize Biden and his policies. Trump is spending much of his time lately sitting in court. But before and after the proceedings, he often stands in front of cameras outside the courtroom and goes after Biden.

At a recent Wisconsin rally, Trump mentioned Biden within the first 2½ minutes of his speech and referenced the president or his administration more than 60 times during his remarks.

Trump’s criticism often takes a dark turn. Last weekend, he told donors at his Florida resort that Biden was running a “Gestapo administration.”

The Gestapo was the secret police force of the Third Reich that squelched political opposition generally and, specifically, targeted Jewish people for arrest during the Holocaust. Trump’s unfounded comparison to Nazi-era tactics is part of his effort to deny and deflect the charges against him, most notably his effort to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory.

Biden’s strategy is a gamble. Voters are divided in their views of both men’s presidencies.

An April poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that nearly half thought Trump’s presidency hurt the country on voting rights and election security, relations with foreign countries, abortion laws and climate change. But more than half of U.S. adults thought Biden’s presidency hurt the country on cost of living and immigration.

For all his criticism of Trump, Biden does get around to talking about his agenda and accomplishments. He tells supporters about his work to boost the economy and to bring the country out of the pandemic. He discusses his support for abortion rights even as he highlights how Trump has taken credit for the overturning of Roe v. Wade in part because of his Supreme Court nominations.

“Folks, the choice is clear,” Biden told supporters recently in the nation’s capital. “Donald Trump’s vision of America is one of revenge and retribution.”

“I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s chances,” he went on. “Not because I’m president, because of the state of the moment. The world needs us.”

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