Closing summary
This brings our live coverage of the second Trump administration to a close for the day. We will be back on Wednesday. Here are the latest developments:
Donald Trump denied that the signature on a 2003 birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender he socialized with for more than a decade, was his. The scrawled signature, “Donald”, closely resembles several other examples of his signature on notes and letters from the same time period.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, cited a report in the conservative press with what she said were the conclusions of “three separate signature analysts who said this absolutely was not the president’s authentic signature”. No such report appears to exist.
The US supreme court paused a judge’s order that required the Trump administration to promptly take steps to spend billions in foreign aid that the president has sought to withhold.
Trump distanced himself from Israel’s airstrikes on Hamas negotiators in Qatar, writing that “it was not a decision made by me” and it “does not advance Israel or America’s goals”. He later told reporters he was “not thrilled about it”.
Trump said that he would be announcing, “probably tomorrow”, that federal troops would be dispatched to help police in a state where the governor favors the idea.
Trump was jeered inside a restaurant in Washington DC by Code Pink protesters who recorded themselves on video confronting the president at close range with the chant: “Free DC! Free Palestine! Trump is the Hitler of our time!”
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Trump heckled by protesters inside Washington DC restaurant chanting: 'Trump is the Hitler of our time!'
Video posted on social media by Jessica Sidman, the food editor of the Washingtonian, captured some jeers and boos for Donald Trump when he stepped out of his limousine to dine at Joe’s seafood restaurant, blocks from the White House, on Tuesday.
Trump booed as he enters Joe’s Seafood a block from the White House. pic.twitter.com/oGVWj0pPmp
— Jessica Sidman (@jsidman) September 9, 2025
That reception was fairly mild compared with how Trump was greeted inside the restaurant by members of the feminist grassroots organization Code Pink, who recorded themselves on video confronting the president at close range with the chant: “Free DC! Free Palestine! Trump is the Hitler of our time!”
As Trump urged the Secret Service to clear the women away from his table, waving his arm and saying: “Come on, let’s go!” one woman shouted at him: “What do you want your legacy to be?”
Others shouted: “He’s terrorizing communities in DC! He’s terrorizing Gaza! Communities all over the world, from Puerto Rico to the Philippines!”
A White House pool reporter outside the restaurant reported that that woman emerged from the restaurant still chanting: “Free DC! Free Palestine! Trump is the Hitler of our time!” and were led across the street by law enforcement.
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Virginia Democrat wins special election, moving House petition to release the Epstein files one vote from success
James Walkinshaw, a Democrat, won a special election to represent Virginia’s 11th congressional district in the House, filling the seat of his former boss, the late Gerry Connolly, who died of esophageal cancer in May.
Last week, Walkinshaw promised to sign the House discharge petition to force a vote on releasing all of the files from the federal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender, that was introduced by Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, and Ro Khanna, a California Democrat.
When Walkinshaw takes his seat, that will bring the number of representatives pledged to vote for the petition to 217.
In two weeks, another Democrat, Adelita Grijalva, is expected to win a special election in Arizona to succeed her father, Raúl Grijalva, who died in March.
Grijalva’s vote would mean that the petition would have the support of 218 members of Congress, a majority of the House, triggering a vote on the measure despite opposition from the House speaker, Mike Johnson.
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Trump says he is ‘not thrilled about’ Israeli attack in Qatar
Asked about the Israeli airstrikes on Hamas negotiators in Qatar on Tuesday, Donald Trump said: “I’m not thrilled about it.”
“I’m not thrilled about the whole situation, it’s not a good situation, but I will say this, we want the hostages back, but we are not thrilled about the way that went down today,” the president said, flanked by his vice-president, JD Vance, his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio.
“Did Israel tell you in advance?” Trump was asked by a reporter.
“No,” he replied.
“So you were caught by surprise, sir,” another reporter said.
“I’m never surprised by anything,” Trump said.
Pressed to say how he found out about the attack, Trump said that he would be “giving a full statement tomorrow. But I’ll tell you this: I was very unhappy about it, very unhappy about every aspect.”
After strikes in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Yemen, Qatar is at least the sixth country in the region Israel has bombed during its war on Gaza, and as its violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank increases.
The organizers of a flotilla of boats planning to challenge the Israeli blockade of Gaza reported on Tuesday that their lead ship had been hit by a drone while docked in Tunisia. The Israeli military has not commented on that reported strike.
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Trump says he is in talks with a governor to deploy troops to another city to be announced
Having ventured two blocks from the White House on Tuesday evening for a photo-op, Donald Trump pronounced Washington DC safe, and gave himself credit.
“We’re standing right in the middle of DC, which, as you know about, over the last year, was very unsafe place, and over the last 20 years was a very unsafe place, and now it’s got virtually no crime; we call it crime-free,” the president told reporters, ignoring police data that showed the city was at a 30-year-low for violent crime before he dispatched national guard troops to patrol the streets, and perform routine landscaping chores in camouflage.
“We’re going to be announcing another city that we’re going to very shortly, we’re working it out the governor of a certain state who would love us to be there, and the mayor of a certain city in that same state would love us to be there”, Trump told the White House press pool, which had been driven to the site, very close to the White House, to watch the president go to a restaurant in the capital that he does not own for the first time in his presidency.
“We’ll announce it probably tomorrow”, he added.
Trump has previously suggested that the city could be New Orleans.
The mayor of New Orleans, LaToya Cantrell, might have a hard time objecting to federal forces, given that she was indicted last month on federal charges of wire fraud and obstruction of justice, allegedly to cover up a romantic relationship with a police officer assigned to protect her.
In February, the Trump administration agreed to drop federal corruption charges against New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, in exchange for his cooperation on immigration enforcement in the city.
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'It’s not my signature', Trump says of signed note to Epstein bearing his name
Speaking to reporters before dinner on Tuesday at Joe’s Seafood in Washington DC, very close to the White House, Donald Trump insisted that the signature on a birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender he socialized with for more than a decade, was not his.
“It’s not my signature and it’s not the way I speak,” the president said.
“Anybody that’s covered me for a long time, know[s] that’s not my language,” he added, miming handwriting and pointing at a familiar face in the press pool.
However, a Wall Street Journal visual analysis shows that the signature on the sexually suggestive birthday note and drawing in the bound album presented to Epstein on his birthday in 2003 looks nearly identical to Trump’s signature on two letters from about the same time, also signed simply “Donald”, to George Conway and Hillary Clinton.
Trump’s argument that the language used in the note, which is an imagined dialogue between Trump and Epstein, does not sound like the way he speaks would be more convincing evidence but for the fact that he frequently hires ghostwriters to write works credited to him, and that the stylized exchange is clearly not intended to sound like everyday speech.
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Kennedy cites Covid death tolls to support his claim that 'CDC is a broken agency'
In an interview outside the White House on Tuesday, Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary, just told Fox News that his radical overhaul of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was necessary because, in his words, “CDC is a broken agency.”
“We literally had the worst outcomes during Covid, we had the highest death count in the world,” Kennedy said as evidence for his claim. “We have 4.2% of the world’s population; we had 20% of the Covid deaths.”
Last week, when Kennedy wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that the US had suffered 19% of the Covid deaths, Dr Demetre Daskalakis, who ran the center that oversees respiratory illnesses and issues vaccine recommendations, called the statistic misleading.
“America has surveillance systems that detected these deaths, other parts of the world do not, so although lots of factors play in here, reporting bias is likely one of the principal drivers of this,” Daskalakis wrote.
It is not clear what source Kennedy was citing for the US death count, but the CDC’s own data reported that 1.2 million Americans had died of Covid by election day in November last year. In that same period, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that there had been “over 7 million confirmed Covid deaths worldwide”. If that count was the complete toll, the US would have suffered 17% of Covid deaths.
However, a peer reviewed study of global excess deaths during the pandemic published in the Lancet in 2022 suggested that more than three times as many people may have died worldwide as a result of Covid than official statistics suggest. In January of 2024, Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, the acting director of pandemic preparedness and prevention at WHO, estimated that the actual death toll from the disease may be closer to 21 million. “We expect that the actual true number is at least three times higher,” Van Kerkhove said.
If that higher global toll is correct, the US would have suffered 5.7% of deaths, a percentage closer to its share of the global population.
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White House says three 'forensic analysts of signatures' clear Trump, but no one can find them
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, was adamant on Tuesday when she said that the scrawled “Donald” on a bawdy 2003 birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein was not Donald Trump’s signature.
As evidence, she said that she had already seen “many forensic analysts of signatures coming out” to agree with her. She then cited one report in particular: “I believe it was the Daily Signal that published a piece with three separate signature analysts who said this absolutely was not the president’s authentic signature.”
“We have maintained that position all along,” Leavitt added. “The president did not write this letter. He did not sign this letter.”
Leavitt’s comment set off a scramble among journalists to find the article she cited as proof. But no such article appears on the website of the publication she referenced, the Daily Signal, a partisan, rightwing outlet that was established by the Heritage Foundation, the conservative thinktank that drew up plans for Trump’s second administration in a report titled Project 2025.
Although Leavitt has not replied to a request from the Guardian to clarify what she meant, it seems likely that she was referring to an analysis of the birthday note published on Tuesday by another conservative website with a similar name: the Daily Wire.
Unfortunately for Leavitt, the Daily Wire report headlined WSJ Epstein Letter ‘Polar Opposite’ Of Trump’s Writing Style: 3 Forensic Analyses Reach Same Verdict, is not about Trump’s signature, and cites no forensic analysts at all. Instead, the outlet reports that it ran the text of the birthday note through three AI three models, and the “forensic linguistic analysis” produced by all three concluded that the language used in the imagined conversation between Trump and Epstein did not match Trump’s writing style.
While the literary device and the formal language used in the note’s dialogue do not sound at all like the way that Trump speaks in public, what exactly Trump’s writing style might be is difficult to pin down, given that he has worked with ghostwriters throughout his career on his books.
The Guardian recently contacted one of the writers Trump worked with, Dave Shiflett, a journalist who wrote a book credited to Trump in 2000, three years before the birthday note to Epstein was produced, to ask if it might have been commissioned by Trump, but composed by someone else.
“My understanding is that Trump neither writes nor reads his books,” Shiflett wrote back. “Several years back a Washington Post reporter told me he had asked Trump about his books and he had said he never read them.”
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Trump says Israeli bombing of Hamas negotiators in Qatar 'does not advance Israel or America’s goals'
Writing on his social network, Donald Trump distanced himself from Israel’s airstrikes on Hamas negotiators in Qatar on Tuesday, noting that “it was not a decision made by me” and “does not advance Israel or America’s goals”.
Trump wrote:
This morning, the Trump Administration was notified by the United States Military that Israel was attacking Hamas which, very unfortunately, was located in a section of Doha, the Capital of Qatar. This was a decision made by Prime Minister Netanyahu, it was not a decision made by me. Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a Sovereign Nation and close Ally of the United States, that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker Peace, does not advance Israel or America’s goals. However, eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal. I immediately directed Special Envoy Steve Witkoff to inform the Qataris of the impending attack, which he did, however, unfortunately, too late to stop the attack. I view Qatar as a strong Ally and friend of the U.S., and feel very badly about the location of the attack.
The president added that he spoke with the Israeli prime minister after the attack, and that Netanyahu “told me that he wants to make Peace”, and with Qatar’s emir and prime minister “and thanked them for their support and friendship to our Country”.
Trump appeared to be referring to the US military base in Qatar, and to the gift it presented to Trump after his recent visit to the country: a luxury 747 jet he intends to take with him after he leaves office.
“I assured them that such a thing will not happen again on their soil,” Trump added, which would seem to suggest that he both has the power to stop Israeli strikes, but for some reason did not have the power to stop the one that took place today.
A spokesperson for Qatar’s foreign ministry, Majed al-Ansari, denied that the country had any advance warning of the Israeli attack. “The statements being circulated about Qatar being informed of the attack in advance are baseless,” he wrote on X. “The call from a US official came during the sound of explosions caused by the Israeli attack in Doha.”
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Trump says kidnapped Princeton scholar Elizabeth Tsurkov has been released in Iraq
In a post on his social network, Donald Trump just announced the release of Elizabeth Tsurkov, an Israeli graduate student at Princeton University who was kidnapped in 2023 while doing research in Iraq by Islamist militants.
Trump wrote that Tsurkov, whose sister is a US citizen, was just released by the Shiite Muslim militant group Kataeb Hezbollah “and is now safely in the American Embassy in Iraq”.
US supreme court pauses order that Trump must spend foreign aid appropriated by Congress
The US supreme court on Tuesday paused a judge’s order that required the Trump administration to promptly take steps to spend billions in foreign aid that the president has sought to withhold.
The court’s action, known as an administrative stay, gave the justices additional time to consider the administration’s formal request to let it withhold some $4 billion authorized by Congress ahead of a September 30 deadline.
The stay was issued by the chief justice, John Roberts, who handles emergency filings arising in Washington.
The case began with a lawsuit against the US state department on behalf of one of the groups denied funding, the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition. It is a legal challenge to Trump’s executive order, “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid”, which was signed on the first day of his second term in January.
Gavin Newsom warns of 'pernicious threats' to democracy and rule of law in California state of the state letter
California governor Gavin Newsom issued a pointed indictment of the Trump administration in his ‘state of the state’ letter, which he delivered to the California legislature on Tuesday.
Newsom, who has emerged as one of Donald Trump’s fiercest and most vocal critics, warned that California is “menaced by a federal administration that dismantles public services, punishes allies across the globe, and sweeps the rule of law into the gutter.”
In recent months, the California governor has sued the administration for sending National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell anti-Ice protects. A move he describes as an act of resistance against the “dangerous and un-American assault on our values.”
Newsom also launched a redistricting plan to counter the Trump-instigated gerrymander in Texas, and employed a social media strategy that mocks the president’s idiosyncratic and persistent posts on Truth Social.
His letter, which is traditionally delivered in person, is Newsom’s fifth address to the legislature, and also marks the 175th anniversary of California’s statehood. He accompanied his written remarks with a pre-recorded and abridged video version, posted to his website and social media accounts.
In response to Newsom’s letter, James Gallagher, the California Assembly Republican Leader, published a video deriding the governor for choosing not to make his speech in front of lawmakers. “I guess he’s too afraid to come and actually talk about what the state of the state actually is,” he said. “His ambitions are more than his ability to govern the state.”
As the California governor is term-limited and this is be Newsom’s penultimate ‘state of the state’. His increased national profile is widely considered part of his political audition to be the Democratic nominee in the 2028 presidential election.
Throughout his letter, Newsom calls out Trump’s “relentless, unhinged California obsession”, without mentioning the president by name.
“Together with the attorney general, we have filed 41 lawsuits on behalf of the people of California to challenge federal actions that threaten to drive up prices, force layoffs, and inflict economic ruin,” he says.
While Newsom underscores the “pernicious threats to the foundation of our democracy,” he notes that California “will emerge stronger”.
He also uses the letter to tout many of the Golden State’s recent achievements. From investments in affordable student housing, to California’s outsized role in delivering nationwide technology and science contributions, to the development of sustainable infrastructure. Despite, what Newsom calls, the administration’s “work to dismantle our clean air and water standards” – referring to Trump’s attempts to hinder California from phasing out gas-powered cars in the next decade.
“We are now nine months into a battle to protect the values we hold most dear and to preserve the economic and social foundation we built for California,” Newsom concludes. “This is not the first time this state has endured darkness. Each time, we have created our own light and forged our own path toward a better place.”
White House asks Congress to extend funding to avoid federal shutdown until January
The White House has asked congress to pass legislation that would extend current federal funding until 31 January, avoiding a partial government shutdown that would otherwise begin on 1 October.
“Today’s request from President Trump and Russ Vought to kick the can down the road on government funding until 31 January makes it clear the White House wants to be able to continue stealing from American communities for another four months,” said Democratic congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, who also serves as the ranking member of the House Appropriations committee.
Republican Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, said the White House’s request was a “suggestion” when speaking to reporters on Capitol hill on Tuesday. “We’re still working on the dates and how long it would extend, but that hasn’t been finalized yet.”
To keep the government funded beyond September, congress would need to pass what’s known as a “continuing resolution” – which would require at least seven Democratic senators to join the chamber’s Republican majority and advance the legislation.
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At the Capitol, top Republicans have joined the White House in alleging that it is not actually Donald Trump’s signature on a suggestive poem and drawing addressed to Jeffrey Epstein that was made public on Monday.
“The White House says it’s not true,” House speaker Mike Johnson told PBS News, adding that he has not seen the artwork from Epstein’s birthday book, which was released by Democrats on the House oversight committee.
The committee’s Republican chair James Comer has been leading an investigation into Epstein and the government’s handling of allegations of sex trafficking against him. Epstein died while awaiting trial on those charges in 2019, in what the justice department said was a suicide.
However, Comer says that he does not plan to investigate the veracity of Trump’s signature on the document.
“Twenty-two years ago was when that was allegedly sent. So, I don’t think the oversight committee is going to invest in looking up something that was 22 years ago,” he told CNN.
Republican congressman and oversight committee member Tim Burchett also doubted that Trump had made the drawing and signed it – even though Trump has a history of making sketches.
“I’ve never known Trump to be much of an artist,” he told CNN, adding that it was “so easy” to forge a signature.
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White House defends supreme court decision to allow immigration raids to continue
Leavitt said in today’s press briefing that the ruling from the supreme court, which would allow immigration raids in Los Angeles to continue, is not indiscriminate profiling – which several critics have expressed.
“Reasonable suspicion is not just based on race, it’s based on a totality of the circumstances to review,” Leavitt said. “When Ice goes out to conduct a targeted operation to deport illegal criminals from our community, they are doing so with intelligence. They are doing so with law enforcement sources. They are doing so in most cases, with the backing of local law enforcement.”
White House offers muddled justification for 'hoax' claims following release of Epstein 'birthday book' documents
The press secretary has just offered a muddled message about what the White House considers to be a “hoax” when it comes to the Epstein investigation.
Leavitt initially said that the administration doesn’t believe the documents are a hoax, but rather the “the entire narrative surrounding Jeffrey Epstein right now, that is absorbing many of the liberal cable channels on television, is a hoax that is being perpetuated by opportunistic Democrats.”
But when pushed about the White House claims that Trump didn’t sign either the birthday note or novelty check – all documents provided by the Epstein estate – Leavitt seemed to suggest these were forged.
“The president has one of the most famous signatures in the world, and he has for many, many years,” she said. “He did not sign those documents. He maintains that position, and that position will be argued in court by his lawyers. The President is very confident he’s going to win this case.”
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Karoline Leavitt just said the president didn’t sign a check that is pictured in Epstein’s “birthday book”.
The picture shows Epstein posting with a $22,000 novelty check – apparently signed by Donald Trump – “for a fully depreciated woman”.
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Karoline Leavitt, notably, did not confirm that Israel informed the US about the strike in Doha. “What I can tell you is the United States military informed the Trump administration,” she said.
White House says Democrats are 'concocting hoax' with Epstein investigation
More than 20 minutes into the briefing, Karoline Leavitt is addressing some of the first questions related to the Epstein investigation.
Leavitt says that Democrats “could have cared about those victims four years ago when Joe Biden was in office, they could have pushed for transparency” but they are using victims of Epstein’s abuse as “political pawns to try to smear and to push a hoax” against the president.
Leavitt adds that she has seen “forensic analysts” argue that the signature on the note to Epstein was not his. “The president did not write this letter. He did not sign this letter,” she said.
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Leavitt says that White House feels 'very badly' about location of Israeli strike in Qatar
Leavitt reads a statement from the White House, which says that the administration “feels very badly about the location” of today’s attack by Isreal in Doha, targeting Hamas leaders.
She added:
President Trump believes this unfortunate incident could serve as an opportunity for peace. The President also spoke to the Emir and prime minister of Qatar and thanked them for their support and friendship to our country. He assured them that such a thing will not happen again on their soil.
A reminder, that my colleague, Lucy Campbell, is covering the latest developments in the Middle East. You can follow along below.
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White House doesn't address Trump's alleged note in Epstein 'birthday book' as briefing begins
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, didn’t mention or address the president’s alleged contribution to Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday scrapbook in her opening monologue in today’s briefing.
Instead, she began her briefing calling out the press for failing to cover the murder of Iryna Zarutska on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina. The 23-year-old, who fled the war in Ukraine, was stabbed by a man with a long criminal record, and a history of mental illness.
Leavitt used her opening remarks to advocate the administration’s stance for harsher sentences.
A short while ago, border czar Tom Homan spoke with reporters outside the White House.
He claimed that undocumented immigrants with no criminal history, who are fearful of being arrested by immigration enforcement in DC, aren’t the specific target of raids. “We’re prioritizing public safety, and addressing national security threats,” he said. “Now, if we run into a non-criminal during these operations, they’re going to be taken into custody, because we’re not going to do what the Biden administration did, and tell Ice you can’t enforce immigration law.”
When asked whether Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers should be required to identify themselves, Homan said “they do,” despite several videos showing masked agents arresting immigrants.
Homan argued that federal law enforcement from various agencies all have “patches” on their tactical gear, and show their credentials to people they are apprehending. “Now, if they’re surrounded by a bunch of people who propose danger – safety first. But guaranteed when someone’s arrested and put in detention they know who arrests them, and that person identifies themselves.”
White House press briefing starting shortly
The White House press briefing with Karoline Leavitt is due to start shortly amid the furore over Trump’s alleged birthday note to Epstein. We will bring you all the key lines here and there will be a live feed at the top of the blog.
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The day so far
Here’s a quick recap of the day’s events so far:
A scrapbook for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday released yesterday contains a photo of him holding a novelty check bearing Donald Trump’s signature, along with a note suggesting Epstein “sold” him a woman for $22,500, shedding further light on the longtime relationship between the president and the convicted sex offender.
An image of a sexually suggestive letter and drawing that appears to bear Trump’s signature - the very same note the president had denied writing after reports of its existence were published earlier this year in the Wall Street Journal – was also released yesterday. Inside the sketch of a woman’s torso, the note depicts an imagined conversation between Trump and Epstein, with what appeared to be Trump’s signature below. One House Democrat described the letter as “sickening”.
Trump has called the release of the Epstein “birthday book” a “dead issue”, while Maga loyalists have amplified claims that the alleged note written by the president to Epstein for the scrapbook is “fake”. Here’s a roundup of who’s in the birthday book and what they said.
Elsewhere, immigration advocates have warned that the supreme court has “effectively legalized racial profiling”, granting federal agents the power to stop people in Los Angeles simply for speaking Spanish or appearing Latino – and opening the door, they say, to a broader unraveling of civil rights protections nationwide. US immigration officers are already ramping up immigration sweeps in Los Angeles again, spurred on by the supreme court’s reversal yesterday of the ban on stopping people solely based on their race, language or job.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics issued a revision today, which says that job growth was overestimated between April 2024 and March 2025. There were actually 911,000 fewer jobs, according to the report. This comes after Trump claimed, baselessly, that job report numbers were being rigged, and fired commissioner Erika McEntarfer.
The Department of Justice is in talks with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), housed within the Department of Homeland Security, about transferring the sensitive voter roll data it has collected from states for use in criminal and immigration-related investigations, according to a report from Reuters.
A state district court judge in Michigan ruled today that 15 “fake electors” will not face a criminal trial for their efforts to overturn and undermine the 2020 election.
Trump calls release of suggestive note to Epstein a ‘dead issue’
Donald Trump has described as a “dead issue” the release of the convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s tome of often highly sexualized 50th birthday messages that includes a suggestive note apparently penned by the president.
The letter, which has been reported before but on Monday was released by Democrats on the House oversight committee after receiving it from the Epstein estate, shows the outline of a woman’s body around an imagined conversation between Epstein and Trump. It is signed “Donald” in between the silhoutte’s legs.
Trump and Epstein were close friends for the better part of 15 years until falling out, allegedly over a real estate deal.
Trump called the letter “fake” and filed a $10bn defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the existence of the document.
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Michigan judge rules that 15 fake electors will not face criminal trial
A state district court judge in Michigan ruled today that 15 “fake electors” will not face a criminal trial for their efforts to overturn and undermine the 2020 election.
The defendants were Republicans who signed documents which said that Donald Trump won the state in 2020, despite Joe Biden’s victory.
Michigan attorney general Dana Nessel charged the electors on several counts of forgery and conspiracy to commit election forgery. However, Judge Kristen D Simmons said that the group genuinely believed there were problems with the election and were attempting to seek redress. Ultimately, Simmons took issue with the prosecution’s ability to prove intent, and rejected claims that the electors understood their duties well enough.
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Photo of novelty check suggests Epstein ‘sold’ Trump a woman for $22,500
A scrapbook for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday released on Monday contains a photo of him holding a novelty check bearing Donald Trump’s signature, along with a note suggesting Epstein “sold” him a woman for $22,500, shedding further light on the longtime relationship between the president and the convicted sex offender.
The photo shows Epstein and Joel Pashcow, a longtime member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, and a third figure, apparently a woman, whose face is redacted in the image, which was shared on social media by Democrats on the House oversight committee. The caption, apparently from Paschow, reads: “Jeffrey showing early talents with money + women! Sells ‘fully depreciated’ [redaction] to Donald Trump for $22,500.”
Epstein “showed early ‘people skills’ too”, the caption continued. “Even though I handled the deal I didn’t get any of the money on the girl!”
The check is signed “DJ Trump” in a style that differs from most of his signatures at the time.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the woman was someone whom Epstein and the now two-time US president “socialized with” in the 1990s. The woman’s lawyer told the newspaper that she cut ties with Epstein around 1997 and had no romantic relationship with either Epstein or Trump, does not know Pashcow, and had no knowledge of the letter, which she called a “disgusting and deeply disturbing hoax”.
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Bureau of Labor Statistics says job figures were overestimated by 911,000
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) issued a revision today, which says that job growth was overestimated between April 2024 and March 2025.
There were actually 911,000 fewer jobs, according to the report. This comes after Donald Trump claimed, baselessly, that job report numbers were being rigged, and fired commissioner Erika McEntarfer. The revision, known as “benchmarking” is a standard, annual process from BLS.
It’s notably not a correction, but an update using more comprehensive data collated throughout the year.
The new figures, however, suggest that the job market might be weaker than expected, and Trump is expected to use today’s revision as fuel for further criticism of the BLS.
Maga loyalists push claims that Trump 'birthday note' to Epstein is 'fake'
Several allies of Donald Trump, also prominent Maga figures, have amplified claims that the alleged note written by the president to Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday scrapbook is “fake”.
Charlie Kirk, the podcast host and founder of the right-wing non-proft Turning Point USA, said the signature on the note didn’t look like Trump’s “at all”.
Meanwhile, administration officials toed the line. White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said on X yesterday that the scanned picture was “FAKE NEWS to perpetuate the Democrat Epstein Hoax!”
Laura Loomer, the conspiracy theorist who has bragged about having the president’s ear, called the Wall Street Journal’s original reporting on the note “a fake story”.
On Capitol Hill, the president’s allies in congress criticised Democrats on the Hill following the release of the birthday album’s pages, after the House oversight committee subpoenaed Epstein’s estate.
“President Trump is not accused of any wrongdoing and Democrats are ignoring the new information the Committee received today,” congressman James Comer, Republican chair of the committee wrote on social media. “It’s appalling Democrats on the Oversight Committee are cherry-picking documents and politicizing information received from the Epstein Estate today.”
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Three leading scholars of election law are starting a new project at New York University, focused on studying public confidence in government and political polarization, according to details first shared with the Guardian.
The effort announced on Tuesday, called the Democracy Project, will be led by NYU law professors Richard Pildes, Samuel Issacharoff, and Bob Bauer (Bauer served as Joe Biden’s personal attorney and Barack Obama’s White House counsel). It will bring together experts with a wide range of ideological and political backgrounds to discuss what reforms could look like.
“Dissatisfaction with democratic government has been pervasive for the last decade throughout the West. Our aim in launching the Democracy Project is to analyze the sources of this phenomenon along many dimensions and across national boundaries, as well as identify the most promising ways to meet this challenge,” Pildes, Issacharoff, and Bauer said in a joint statement.
The effort comes as vast numbers of Americans are concerned about the state of democracy. A June NPR/Marist poll found that 76% of Americans felt democracy was under serious threat. Seventy-three per cent of Americans also see politically motivated violence as a major problem.
The project is launching with an essay series on democracy issues that will launch daily over the next 100 days. Those set to contribute to the series include former Texas solicitor general Jonathan Mitchell, former Montana governor Steve Bullock, former Justice on UK supreme court Lord Jonathan Sumption, former South Africa supreme court Justice Catherine O’Regan, and businessman Mark Cuban.
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Justice department considering handing over voter roll data to homeland security – report
The Department of Justice is in talks with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), housed within the Department of Homeland Security, about transferring the sensitive voter roll data it has collected from states for use in criminal and immigration-related investigations, according to a report from Reuters.
The voter registration data was gathered over the last several months by the DoJ’s civil rights division, which has sent requests for voter registration-related information to at least 24 states, per Reuters.
The report cites government records, which show that HSI plans to run the voter roll data against other information in its law enforcement databases for use in criminal and immigration investigations. Legal experts who spoke with Reuters said sharing such data raises privacy concerns.
Donald Trump has routinely claimed, without evidence, that there is large scale fraud within the US election system, and swathes of non-citizens are casting votes.
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My colleague, Oliver Holmes, has been going through the Jeffrey Epstein 50th birthday album that House Democrats on the oversight committee released on Monday, after they subpoenaed Epstein’s estate.
As Oliver notes, much of the book seems to be a collection of flattering and celebratory letters – often highly sexualised – from people who knew Epstein. They include photos of him embracing women in bikinis whose faces were redacted, and others showing scenes featuring wild animals having sex.
Some of the key takeaways from the scrapbook, compiled by longtime accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003, include:
Bill Clinton, who had left the US presidency a couple years before the publication of the book, is listed in the “friends” section.
Peter Mandelson, the current UK ambassador to the United States, called Epstein his “best pal”. There are also photographs in the book which show Mandelson in shorts gazing from a balcony and in a white dressing gown laughing with Epstein.
One of the most striking images in the collection is a drawing of Epstein handing young girls balloons and a lollipop in 1983, alongside another drawing of him 20 years later, receiving a massage from topless women in 2003.
Read more in Oliver’s full report below:
Attorney general touts more than 2,100 arrests in DC
Attorney general Pam Bondi said that there had been 2,177 arrests in DC since the beginning of the federal law enforcement surge in the nation’s capital that began on 7 August.
She also said that 222 illegal firearms had been seized.
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We’ll hear from Donald Trump at 4.30pm ET today, when he signs a proclamation in the Oval Office. The press will be permitted, and we can expect a series of questions: from fallout over his alleged Epstein “birthday book” contribution, to the ramping up of immigration enforcement in Chicago.
Before that, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will hold a briefing at 1pm ET, where reporters will get an opportunity to question the administration. We’ll bring you the latest as it happens.
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US supreme court ‘effectively legalized racial profiling’, immigration experts warn
Immigration advocates warned that the supreme court has “effectively legalized racial profiling”, granting federal agents the power to stop people in Los Angeles simply for speaking Spanish or appearing Latino – and opening the door, they say, to a broader unraveling of civil rights protections nationwide.
In a 6–3 decision on Monday, the court’s conservative majority lifted restrictions on “roving” immigration patrols across the LA area after a lower court found that federal agents were indiscriminately targeting people on the basis of race, language, employment or location.
The high court’s ruling alarmed civil liberties advocates and rattled immigrant communities in a county where one in three residents is foreign-born, and where the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement has already seen armed and masked federal agents detain residents, including US citizens, near bus stops, construction sites, churches and other public spaces with little explanation or due process.
At a news conference near a Home Depot in a heavily Latino neighborhood of Los Angeles, where raids in June sparked massive protests, the city’s mayor, Karen Bass, assailed the decision, saying the supreme court “has now given the green light for law enforcement to profile and detain Angelenos based on their race”.
Bass quoted from the forceful dissent issued by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina to serve on the court, who warned: “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”
“I agree with her – I dissent,” Bass said. “We all dissent because from the beginning, we have known that Los Angeles has been used as a test case for total dominance and unchecked power by the federal government.”
Texas state representative James Talarico, a Democrat and former schoolteacher with a rising national profile, joined a widening race for the US Senate on Tuesday that already has two prominent challengers trying to unseat Republican senator John Cornyn.
Talarico, 36, has gained popularity in the Texas House through viral social media posts challenging Republican-led policies such as private school vouchers and requiring the Ten Commandments in classrooms, AP reports. It is the first statewide race for Talarico, who flipped a seat in Austin’s booming suburbs in 2018.
He will seek the Democratic nomination in a field that includes former US representative Colin Allred, who is running again after unsuccessfully challenging Republican senator Ted Cruz last year.
“I get the sense that there is a deep hunger across the political spectrum for a fundamentally different kind of politics,” Talarico said in an interview ahead of his announcement. “It’s been 10 years now of Trumpian politics, politics as a blood sport ... and there is a hunger 10 years later for a return to more timeless values of sincerity and honesty and compassion and respect.”
Talarico, who has degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and Harvard University, is working on a Master of Divinity at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and said he hopes to one day lead the church he grew up in.
Boston mayor Michelle Wu, the city’s first Asian and female leader, is expected to take a critical step to securing a second term when voters on Tuesday narrow the field to the top two candidates.
The expectation is that Wu will face against nonprofit leader Josh Kraft, son of Patriots owner Robert Kraft, AP reports. Two other candidates, Robert Cappucci and Domingos DaRosa, are also running. Cappucci is a military veteran and former district school committee member while DaRosa is a community activist.
For months, Wu has maintained a double-digit lead over Kraft, despite him spending millions of dollars of his own money on his campaign. Wu has been bolstered in part by her defense of the city against attacks from the Trump administration. Both are Democrats, and the party has occupied City Hall for the past century, though the position is nonpartisan.
Members of president Donald Trump’s administration have accused the city of not doing enough to crack down on illegal immigration and threatened a surge in arrests.
Boston is commonly known as a sanctuary city, which limits cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Wu has repeatedly said she wants it to be a welcoming place for immigrants.
Court rejects Trump’s attempt to overturn E Jean Carroll’s $83m verdict
Donald Trump now cannot claim presidential immunity to get off the hook from paying $83.3m in damages to the writer E Jean Carroll, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday, upholding a jury’s 2024 award against the president for defamation.
Trump’s lawyers had pointed to the supreme court’s ruling last year saying the president has immunity for official acts to argue that the damages should be overturned. A three-judge panel for the US court of appeals for the second circuit, rejected that argument.
“The jury’s duly rendered damages awards were reasonable in light of the extraordinary and egregious facts of this case,” the judges wrote in their unanimous opinion. The panel consisted of judges Denny Chin, an appointee of Barack Obama, as well as Sarah AL Merriam and Maria Araújo Kahn, both appointees of Joe Biden. Their decision was unanimous.
At an earlier stage in the case, they also concluded Trump had waived his right to argue presidential immunity because he had not raised it earlier.
“We conclude that Trump has failed to identify any grounds that would warrant reconsidering our prior holding on presidential immunity,” the panel wrote. “A case involving the criminal prosecution of a former President, did not alter the prevailing law on whether presidential immunity can be waived.” Justin Smith, a lawyer for Trump, had argued that presidential immunity is “not waivable”, according to Politico.
Neither the White House nor Trump’s personal lawyers in the case immediately responded to requests for comment. The second circuit on 13 June upheld Carroll’s separate $5m jury verdict against Trump in May 2023 for a similar defamation and for sexual assault.
Donald Trump’s second state visit to the UK will see a big policing operation led by drones in the airspace over Windsor, police have said.
King Charles is to host the US president and his wife, Melania Trump, at Windsor Castle from 17 to 19 September, where they will be entertained with a ceremonial welcome and state banquet.
A round-the-clock policing operation will be in place in the Berkshire town during the event, with a temporary order restricting the airspace from 16 September – when the state visit rehearsal is to take place – until 18 September.
This means non-police drones and smaller aircraft cannot fly through the protected area, Thames Valley police officers said on Monday during a drone-flying demonstration at the force’s training centre in Sulhamstead, Berkshire.
The Stop Trump Coalition is to stage a mass demonstration in central London on the first day of the trip, with a further protest planned near Windsor Castle.
US immigration officers ramp up sweeps in LA after raid restrictions are lifted
US immigration officers are ramping up immigration sweeps in Los Angeles again after the supreme court reversed a temporary restraining order that banned the Trump administration from stopping people solely based on their race, language or job.
In a post on Twitter/X, Greg Bovino, the head of US border patrol in Los Angeles, called the temporary restraining order “very poorly” written and “the worst” he’s ever seen. He also said that border patrol would be starting operations back up again today.
“We are going hard in Los Angeles today and are hitting a location as I write this,” Bovino wrote.
Immigration officers were forced to pause their sweeping immigration raids after advocacy groups sued the Trump administration for systemically racially profiling brown-skinned people. US district judge in Los Angeles Maame E Frimpong granted the groups a temporary restraining order after finding a “mountain of evidence” that the immigration enforcement tactics were violating the constitution.
But the supreme court ruled 6-3 to lift those restrictions on Monday. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who voted to approve the stay on the order, wrote that the Immigration and Nationality Act allows immigration officers to “interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or to remain in the United States”. While “ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion” it can be used as a “relevant” factor, he wrote.
House committee releases image of 'sickening' Trump birthday note to Epstein
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with news that House Democrats on Monday released an image of a sexually suggestive letter and drawing that appears to bear the signature of Donald Trump, the very same note the president had denied writing after reports of its existence were published earlier this year in the Wall Street Journal.
The letter, described as “sickening” by one representative, was turned over by lawyers for disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s estate in response to a subpoena from the House oversight committee, and was included in a set of notes sent to the convicted sex offender for his 50th birthday.
The image showed a letter that in effect comported with a description in the Journal’s report from July. Inside the sketch of a woman’s torso, the note depicts an imagined conversation between Trump and Epstein, with what appeared to be Trump’s signature below.
“The oversight committee has secured the infamous ‘Birthday Book’ that contains a note from President Trump that he has said does not exist,” Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the panel, said in a statement. “It’s time for the president to tell us the truth about what he knew and release all the Epstein files.”
The White House did not immediately comment on the letter, but officials sought to discredit the note. Deputy chief of staff for communications, Taylor Budowich, suggested in an X post carrying a different version of Trump’s signature that the letter or the signature had been falsified.
“Time for news corp to open that check book, it’s not his signature. DEFAMATION!” Budowich wrote, referencing the defamation suit that Trump filed against News Corp, the parent company of the Journal, over its original story.
Maryland representative Jamie Raskin called the letter “sickening” and called for the full Epstein files to be released. Posting on X, he said:
House Democrats fought to bring this sickening letter into the light while Trump and MAGA mouthpieces assured us it did not exist. Trump even sued the Wall Street Journal for reporting on it!
We can’t trust a word MAGA says. Release the full Epstein file NOW!
Read the full story here:
In other developments:
US immigration officers are ramping up immigration sweeps in Los Angeles again after the supreme court reversed a temporary restraining order that banned the Trump administration from stopping people solely based on their race, language or job. In a post on Twitter/X, Greg Bovino, the head of US border patrol in Los Angeles, called the temporary restraining order “very poorly” written and “the worst” he’s ever seen.
Donald Trump’s second state visit to the UK will see a big policing operation led by drones in the airspace over Windsor, police have said. King Charles is to host the US president and his wife, Melania Trump, at Windsor Castle from 17 to 19 September, where they will be entertained with a ceremonial welcome and state banquet.
Donald Trump launched a vitriolic attack against Tom Hanks for supposedly being “destructive” and “woke” after one of America’s most beloved actors was snubbed without much explanation by West Point last week. On his social media site on Monday, the US president applauded the alumni association of the US Military Academy (or West Point) for abruptly calling off a ceremony honoring Hanks, twice an Academy award winner who has played numerous military characters and also has a long history of advocating for veterans.
Donald Trump now cannot claim presidential immunity to get off the hook from paying $83.3m in damages to the writer E Jean Carroll, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday, upholding a jury’s 2024 award against the president for defamation. Trump’s lawyers had pointed to the supreme court’s ruling last year saying the president has immunity for official acts to argue that the damages should be overturned.
The US supreme court allowed Donald Trump on Monday to keep a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission away from her post for now, temporarily pausing a judicial order that required the reinstatement of the commissioner who the Republican president has sought to oust.
Intent on vindication after spending four months in prison last year, Donald Trump’s White House trade adviser Peter Navarro asked a federal appeals court on Sunday night to force the justice department to explain why it would not defend his 2022 conviction for defying a January 6 committee subpoena.
