Summary
Here’s a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
Donald Trump said on Saturday that he had asked the justice department to release all grand jury testimony in Jeffrey Epstein’s case. In a post on Truth Social, the president declared that even if the court gave its “full and unwavering support” that “nothing will be good enough for the troublemakers and radical left lunatics making the request”: “I have asked the Justice Department to release all Grand Jury testimony with respect to Jeffrey Epstein, subject only to Court Approval. With that being said, and even if the Court gave its full and unwavering approval, nothing will be good enough for the troublemakers and radical left lunatics making the request. It will always be more, more, more. MAGA!”
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Friday it is eliminating its research and development arm and reducing agency staff by thousands of employees. One union leader said the moves “will devastate public health in our country”. The agency’s office of research and development (ORD) has long provided the scientific underpinnings for the EPA’s mission to protect the environment and human health. The EPA said in May it would shift its scientific expertise and research efforts to program offices that focus on major issues such as air and water.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has reportedly stripped eight of Brazil’s 11 supreme court judges of their US visas as the White House escalates its campaign to help the country’s former president Jair Bolsonaro avoid justice over his alleged attempt to seize power with a military coup. Bolsonaro, a far-right populist with ties to Trump’s Maga movement, is on trial for allegedly masterminding a murderous plot to cling to power after losing the 2022 election to his leftwing rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro is expected to be convicted by the supreme court in the coming weeks and faces a jail sentence of up to 43 years.
Brazil’s judiciary will not be intimidated by a US decision to target officials involved in the trial of Bolsonaro with visa bans, a senior judicial official said late on Friday, criticising the move as arbitrary, according to Reuters. In an escalation of tensions between Trump and the government of Latin America’s largest economy, Washington imposed visa restrictions on Friday on supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes, his family and other unnamed court officials.
Democrats are condemning CBS for its recent decision to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, noting the news comes just a few days after its host criticized the network’s parent company, Paramount, for settling a $16m lawsuit with Trump. Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who appeared as a guest on Colbert’s show on Thursday night, later wrote on social media: “If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better.”
Updated
While colleges and universities slow down during summer break, Ahniwake Rose is busy wondering what the fall semester will hold for the nation’s 37 tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) – and if they will be able to stay open much longer.
As the president and CEO of the Indigenous non-profit American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC), Rose (Cherokee and Muscogee Creek) braces as the schools she represents face a potential nearly 90% reduction in funding starting in October.
Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2026 budget includes a proposal to slash operations funding from $183.3m to $22.1m for bureau of Indian education post-secondary programs – career and technical schools, community colleges, four-year colleges and universities. On 15 July, a House appropriations subcommittee approved legislation that allotted $1.5bn to the bureau of Indian education, though it did not specify how much would go toward post-secondary programs. Congress still needs to finish approving the budget for the bureau of Indian education, a subdivision of the Department of Interior.
For the full story, click here:
Updated
Maryland’s Democratic representative Jamie Raskin has joined in on public calls for the Donald Trump administration to release the entirety of the Jeffrey Epstein files, saying on X:
We don’t need Trump or Bondi to sift through the stack and tell America what they think is ‘credible’ in the Epstein files. Thanks, but no thanks—we’ll decide ourselves. The president should stop playing us for fools and suckers. Release everything—now.
Raskin echoed similar sentiments on MSNBC, saying about the Trump administration:
Their policies are hurting our people and we’ve got to turn it around. And let’s start by having some truth and clearing the air over this whole Epstein affair as quickly as possible.
Updated
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Friday it is eliminating its research and development arm and reducing agency staff by thousands of employees. One union leader said the moves “will devastate public health in our country”.
The agency’s office of research and development (ORD) has long provided the scientific underpinnings for the EPA’s mission to protect the environment and human health. The EPA said in May it would shift its scientific expertise and research efforts to program offices that focus on major issues such as air and water.
The agency said on Friday it is creating a new office of applied science and environmental solutions that will allow it to focus on research and science “more than ever before”.
Once fully implemented, the changes will save the EPA nearly $750m, officials said.
For the full story, click here:
Amid the buzz surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein files, Donald Trump insisted on Saturday that the US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities have completely “obliterated” the sites.
Writing on TruthSocial, Trump said:
All three nuclear sites in Iran were completely destroyed and/or OBLITERATED. It would take years to bring them back into service and, if Iran wanted to do so, they would be much better off starting anew, in three different locations, prior to those sites being obliterated, should they decide to do so. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Trump’s post comes after a new NBC report, which cited five current and former US officials familiar with a recent US assessment of the strikes, said that two of the three sites were not “as badly damaged”.
The news report, which was released on Thursday, added that two out of the three sites were “degraded only to a point where nuclear enrichment could resume in the next several months if Iran wants it to”.
Updated
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has reportedly stripped eight of Brazil’s 11 supreme court judges of their US visas as the White House escalates its campaign to help the country’s former president Jair Bolsonaro avoid justice over his alleged attempt to seize power with a military coup.
Bolsonaro, a far-right populist with ties to Donald Trump’s Maga movement, is on trial for allegedly masterminding a murderous plot to cling to power after losing the 2022 election to his leftwing rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro is expected to be convicted by the supreme court in the coming weeks and faces a jail sentence of up to 43 years.
As the day of judgment nears, Trump has been increasing pressure on the court and President Lula’s administration. On 9 July, the US president announced he would impose 50% tariffs on all Brazilian imports as of 1 August, partly as a result of the supposed persecution of his ally. The move triggered an outpouring of nationalist anger in the South American country, with Lula describing it as “unacceptable blackmail”.
After years of heated attacks on the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, the Trump administration has begun suggesting recent costly renovations at the central bank’s Washington DC buildings could justify firing Powell.
Donald Trump’s antipathy for Powell stems mainly from the central bank boss’s refusal to lower interest rates – something the president has repeatedly called for.
Recent comments from the supreme court suggested firing Powell could be unconstitutional, but that hasn’t stopped the White House from getting creative.
Any move by the White House to formally dismiss the Fed chair would be unprecedented. The president has historically respected the independence of the central bank, and kept out of its way – even if there was disagreement over policy.
For the full story, click here:
Trump: nothing will be good enough for 'lunatics' requesting Epstein files
Donald Trump said on Saturday that he had asked the justice department to release all grand jury testimony in Jeffrey Epstein’s case. In a post on Truth Social, the president declared that even if the court gave its “full and unwavering support” that “nothing will be good enough for the troublemakers and radical left lunatics making the request”:
I have asked the Justice Department to release all Grand Jury testimony with respect to Jeffrey Epstein, subject only to Court Approval. With that being said, and even if the Court gave its full and unwavering approval, nothing will be good enough for the troublemakers and radical left lunatics making the request. It will always be more, more, more. MAGA!
Updated
The Trump administration has decided to destroy $9.7m worth of contraceptives rather than send them abroad to women in need.
A state department spokesperson confirmed that the decision had been made – a move that will cost US taxpayers $167,000. The contraceptives are primarily long-acting, such as IUDs and birth control implants, and were almost certainly intended for women in Africa, according to two senior congressional aides, one of whom visited a warehouse in Belgium that housed the contraceptives. It is not clear to the aides whether the destruction has already been carried out, but said they had been told that it was set to occur by the end of July.
“It is unacceptable that the state department would move forward with the destruction of more than $9m in taxpayer-funded family planning commodities purchased to support women in crisis settings, including war zones and refugee camps,” Jeanne Shaheen, a Democratic senator from New Hampshire, said in a statement. Shaheen and Brian Schatz, a Democratic senator from Hawaii, have introduced legislation to stop the destruction.
“This is a waste of US taxpayer dollars and an abdication of US global leadership in preventing unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions and maternal deaths,” added Shaheen, who in June sent a letter to the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, about the matter.
The department decided to destroy the contraceptives because it could not sell them to any “eligible buyers”, in part because of US laws and rules that prohibit sending US aid to organizations that provide abortion services, counsel people about the procedure or advocate for the right to it overseas, according to the state department spokesperson.
The “Make America Great Again” (Maga) base is in revolt as never before. The trigger was Donald Trump’s broken promise to publicly release details about Jeffrey Epstein, a wealthy financier and convicted sex offender, who was facing federal charges of sex-trafficking minors when he died in jail in 2019.
Spurred by the president and his allies, Trump’s movement has long latched on to the Epstein scandal, claiming the existence of a secret client list and that he was murdered in his cell as part of a cover-up. But last week the justice department and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced there was no evidence that the disgraced financier kept such a list or was blackmailing powerful figures.
Far from closing the case, the memo deepened supporters’ obsession and sense of grievance. A movement defined by the view that elites rig the system against them felt cheated. Trump made efforts to douse the flames with ever-shifting explanations, excuses and distractions but merely poured fuel on the fire.
To some, his erratic and evasive behaviour implies a guilty secret. It also evokes a line from President John F Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural address: “Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.” Having spent years embracing QAnon-tinged propaganda that casts him as the only saviour who can demolish the “deep state”, Trump is now seen as co-opted by its corrupt bureaucracy.
Senior Brazilian official says judiciary won't be intimidated by US visa bans
Brazil’s judiciary will not be intimidated by a US decision to target officials involved in the trial of former president Jair Bolsonaro with visa bans, a senior judicial official said late on Friday, criticising the move as arbitrary, according to Reuters.
In an escalation of tensions between US President Donald Trump and the government of Latin America’s largest economy, Washington imposed visa restrictions on Friday on supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes, his family and other unnamed court officials. The visa bans were a response to the supreme court’s decision to issue search warrants and restraining orders targeting Trump ally Bolsonaro, who is accused of plotting a coup to overturn the results of a 2022 election he lost.
Solicitor general Jorge Messias, the top judicial official for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s executive branch, said in a statement posted on X that prosecutor general Paulo Gonet was also targeted by the ban. “Rest assured that no improper manoeuvre or sordid conspiratorial act will intimidate our country’s judiciary in the independent and dignified exercise of its task,” he added.
According to Reuters, Messias said the Brazilian officials were subject to “arbitrary acts of visa revocation by a foreign nation on account of their fulfilment of their legitimate institutional responsibilities in accordance with constitutional terms”.
In addition to Moraes, seven other justices from Brazil’s 11-member supreme court were also hit by the US visa restrictions, government institutional relations minister Gleisi Hoffmann said on Friday. They include justices Luís Roberto Barroso, Dias Toffoli, Cristiano Zanin, Flávio Dino, Cármen Lúcia, Edson Fachin, and Gilmar Mendes.
The prosecutor general’s office and the supreme court did not immediately respond to Reuter’s requests for comment.
Trump has criticised the proceedings against Bolsonaro as a “witch-hunt”, a term he has used to describe his own treatment by political opponents, and has called for the charges to be dropped. In a letter last week, he announced a 50% tariff on Brazilian goods starting 1 August, opening the message with criticism of the trial.
Bolsonaro is on trial before Brazil’s supreme court on charges of plotting a coup to stop Lula from taking office in January 2023. Bolsonaro has denied that he led an attempt to overthrow the government but has acknowledged taking part in meetings aimed at reversing the election’s outcome.
Cpt Adam VanGerpen, public information officer for the Los Angeles fire department told ABC that people inside the club came out to help in the minutes before emergency crews arrived to help the victims, after a vehicle drove into a crowd along Santa Monica Boulevard in East Hollywood.
According to the Associated Press (AP), he said:
They were all standing in line going into a nightclub. There was a taco cart out there, so they were … getting some food, waiting to go in. And there’s also a valet line there. The valet podium was taken out, the taco truck was taken out, and then a large number of people were impacted by the vehicle.
Updated
Also, the Los Angeles City fire department (LAFD) issued an update on their initial statement, saying that 124 fire personnel assisted at the scene.
It added that the LAFD had coordinated transport for seven people in a critical condition, six in a serious condition and 10 in a fair condition. Seven patients refused transport after assessment on the scene, said the LAFD.
Number injured in Hollywood vehicle incident revised to 30, says LAFD
The Associated Press has more on the story that a vehicle drove into a crowd in Hollywood, injuring more than 20 (see 4am PDT). That number has been revised to 30.
Victims were transported to local hospitals and trauma centers, according to Capt Adam Van Gerpen, public information officer for the Los Angeles fire department. At least three were in critical condition after being injured along Santa Monica Boulevard in East Hollywood, the fire department said in a statement earlier.
According to the AP, Van Gerpen told ABC that a line of people – the majority female – were waiting to enter a nightclub when they were struck by a vehicle that also hit a taco truck and valet stand.
Paramedics discovered that one of the patients had a gunshot wound, Van Gerpen said.
“This is under police investigation,” he said. “This will be a large investigation with the LAPD.”
Updated
Sidney Blumenthal, the former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has written for the Guardian about why Donald Trump cannot dispel the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein:
Some enchanted evening, Donald Trump saw a stranger across a crowded room.
It is likely that there is hardly anyone living who knows exactly under what glowing lights Donald Trump met Jeffrey Epstein, except perhaps Trump himself and Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend who is serving a 20-year prison term for helping to procure minors for sexual abuse. Trump said in an interview in 2002, when his Epstein relationship was still tight, that it had been a 15-year mutual admiration society. Epstein was “a terrific guy” and “a lot of fun to be with,” and “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side”. Epstein described himself as “Donald’s closest friend for 10 years”.
The 1990s and early 2000s were the heyday of the Trump-Epstein romp. Roger Stone, Trump’s dirty trickster who was dumped from the 1994 Bob Dole presidential campaign when he and his wife were exposed apparently advertising for threesomes, was a hanger-on in the Palm Beach demimonde. “There’s 100 beautiful women and 10 guys. Look, how cool are we?” he told the Washington Post in 2016. “I was happy to be invited. I mean, it was great.”
The Trump biographer Michael Wolff told me on my podcast The Court of History how Epstein opened his safe in his New York townhouse for him to retrieve a pile of about a dozen photographs of Trump at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion. “They were kind of spread out like playing cards,” Wolff said. “And it was Trump – with girls of uncertain age. In two of them, topless girls are sitting on Trump’s lap. In another, he has a visible stain on his pants while several girls are laughing and pointing at it.” Wolff said: “I think it’s certainly not unlikely that they were in the safe when the FBI came in after his arrest and took everything.”
Read on here:
In Trump’s lawsuit against Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal, the US president calls the paper'’s report “false and defamatory” and demands at least $10bn in damages and court costs from Rupert Murdoch, two Wall Street Journal reporters, News Corporation chief executive Robert Thomson and related corporate entities.
You can read the court documents in full here:
Health experts raise alarm over RFK Jr’s ‘war on science’ amid mass firings and budget cuts
The Trump administration’s “war on science” appears to have entered a new phase in the aftermath of a recent supreme court decision that empowered health and human services secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a prominent vaccine sceptic, and other agency leaders, to implement mass firings – effectively greenlighting the politicization of science.
The decision comes as Kennedy abruptly canceled a scheduled meeting of a key health care advisory panel, the US Preventive Services Task Force, earlier this month. That, combined with his recent removal of a panel of more than a dozen vaccine advisers, signals that his dismantling of the science-based policymaking at HHS is likely far from over.
“The current administration is waging a war on science,” warned Celine Gounder, a professor of medicine and an infectious disease expert at New York University in a keynote talk in May to graduates of Harvard’s School of Public Health.
“Today we see rising threats to the public health institutions that have kept our world safe for generations,” she said, citing “cuts to research that benefits the lives of millions, looming public health emergencies that are not being addressed with the urgency they demand, and a continued coordinated attack on the very idea of the scientific process.”
Gounder added:
Over the past few months, we have seen the Trump administration engage not only in medical misinformation, but in active censorship of scientific discourse.
Since he took the helm at HHS, Kennedy’s unscientific views on vaccines and some other medical matters coupled with the agency’s widespread research and staff cuts, have prompted protests from scientists inside and outside HHS plus lawsuits.
Updated
More than 20 injured after vehicle drives into crowd in East Hollywood, LA fire department says
Away from politics, the Los Angeles fire department (LAFD) is reporting that a vehicle has driven into a crowd of people in East Hollywood, injuring more than 20.
Up to five people are in critical condition, a further eight to ten are in serious condition and 10-15 in fair condition, the department reported on Saturday.
The incident occurred on Santa Monica Boulevard. In a statement, the department added that the LAFD was “coordinating patient triage and transport at this time”.
More details soon …
Updated
Democrats are condemning CBS for its recent decision to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, noting the news comes just a few days after its host criticized the network’s parent company, Paramount, for settling a $16m lawsuit with Donald Trump.
Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who appeared as a guest on Colbert’s show on Thursday night, later wrote on social media:
If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better.
In early July, Paramount settled a “frivolous” lawsuit with Trump over the president’s claim that CBS News deceptively edited an interview with then presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Paramount is also seeking approval from the US Federal Communications Commission for an $8.4bn merger with Skydance Media. On Monday, Colbert called the settlement “a big fat bribe”.
Scott Kowalchyk/CBS via Getty Images
Colbert’s firing would not be the first potentially spurred by a dispute with the president. In February, after MSNBC fired host Joy Reid, Trump celebrated her show’s cancellation. Reid, a Black woman, had been a vocal critic of Trump and spoke frankly about the Black Lives Matter movement and war in Gaza. And in December, ABC News agreed to settle a defamation lawsuit Trump filed against the network and anchor George Stephanopoulos with a $15m payment to a Trump foundation and museum, as well as paying $1m in the president’s legal fees.
The Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, who has called for an investigation into Paramount’s relationship with Trump over the Skydance merger, wrote:
CBS canceled Colbert’s show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount.
Skydance is owned by David Ellison, the son of a close Trump ally, Larry Ellison.
In a joint statement, Paramount and CBS executives wrote that the cancellation was “purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night”.
Writing on his own social media platform, Trump celebrated the show’s cancellation:
I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert! Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show.
Memo from the White House: inflation is “right on track”, it declared this week, citing the latest official data. Price growth is now “very low”, according to Donald Trump. The actual statistics paint a markedly different picture.
Just six months after he regained power, in part by promising to rapidly reduce prices, Trump has presided over the chaotic rollout of tariffs on an array of overseas products that many have argued risk having the exact opposite effect.
After a lull, the consumer price index (CPI) is back on the rise. In June, everything from fruit and washing machines to dresses and toys became more expensive.
Businesses in the US and around the world have struggled to keep up with the Trump administration’s erratic rollout of its aggressive trade strategy: the daily White House soap opera of warnings, threats, confusion, deadlines, delays and drama.
Putting to one side the steady stream of twists, cliffhangers and all-caps declarations, each episode has pushed US tariffs higher. The overall average effective tariff rate is now set to hit 20.6%, according to the non-partisan The Budget Lab at Yale, its highest level since 1910.
Eventually, someone has to foot the bill.
By Trump’s telling, the countries he targets will be forced to pay up. But in reality, tariffs are paid by the importer – US-based companies, in this case – and often passed on.
Tariffs are a burden. One way or another, the impact typically is felt along each link of the supply chain, from the initial manufacturer to the customer who buys the finished product. “All through that chain, people will be trying not to be the ones who pick up the cost,” noted Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, at a recent press conference.
“But ultimately, the cost of the tariff has to be paid and some of it will fall on the end consumer,” added Powell. “We know that. That’s what businesses say. That’s what the data says from past evidence. So we know that’s coming.”
The effect is not immediate, though. It might take Trump a matter of minutes to announce a tariff on Truth Social, but the full effects can take months to work their way through the economy.
Updated
Trump's US foreign aid funding cut stalls water projects, increasing risks for millions, finds Reuters
The Trump administration’s decision to slash nearly all US foreign aid has left dozens of water and sanitation projects half-finished across the globe, creating new hazards for some of the people they were designed to benefit, Reuters has found.
Reuters has identified 21 unfinished projects in 16 countries after speaking to 17 sources familiar with the infrastructure plans. Most of these projects have not previously been reported, it adds.
With hundreds of millions of dollars in funding cancelled since January, workers have put down their shovels and left holes half dug and building supplies unguarded, according to interviews with US and local officials and internal documents seen by Reuters. As a result, millions of people who were promised clean drinking water and reliable sanitation facilities by the United States have been left to fend for themselves, reports Reuters.
Water towers intended to serve schools and health clinics in Mali have been abandoned, according to two US officials who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity. In Nepal, construction was halted on more than 100 drinking water systems, leaving plumbing supplies and 6,500 bags of cement in local communities, according to Reuters. The Himalayan nation will use its own funds to finish the job, according to the country’s water minister Pradeep Yadav.
According to Reuters, in Lebanon, a project to provide cheap solar power to water utilities was scrapped, costing 70 people their jobs and halting plans to improve regional services. The utilities are now relying on diesel and other sources to power their services, Suzy Hoayek, an adviser to Lebanon’s energy ministry told the news agency.
In Kenya, residents of Taita Taveta county told Reuters they are now more vulnerable to flooding than they had been before, as half-finished irrigation canals could collapse and sweep away crops. Community leaders say it will cost $2,000 to lower the risk – twice the average annual income in the area.
Updated
Trump says 10 Israeli hostages to be released from Gaza ‘very shortly’
Ten more hostages will be released from Gaza “very shortly”, Donald Trump said at the White House on Friday. The news comes as the president continues to push for a 60-day ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
“We got most of the hostages back. We’re going to have another 10 coming very shortly, and we hope to have that finished quickly,” Trump said during a dinner with Republican senators. He also praised his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff as “fantastic”.
The current Israel-Hamas ceasefire proposal includes terms calling for the return of 10 hostages, and the remains of 18 others. In exchange, Israel would be required to release an unspecified number of Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
Earlier on Friday, Axios reported that the director of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, visited Washington this week in hope that the United States would support its efforts to ask other countries to take in the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians still living in Gaza. Mossad chief David Barnea told Witkoff that Israel has discussed relocating Palestinians to Ethiopia, Indonesia and Libya.
Trump has boasted that a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas would be fothcoming since posting on his social media platform on 1 July that Israel has agreed to the “necessary conditions” to finalise a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza.
Last week, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House, where he presented Trump with a copy of a letter he had sent to the Nobel committee nominating the president for a Nobel peace prize.
As Donald Trump tries to claim he was “not a fan” of Jeffrey Epstein, photos, videos and anecdotes paint a picture of their relationship, writes Adam Gabbatt:
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has called for Barack Obama and former senior US national security officials to be prosecuted after accusing them of a “treasonous conspiracy” intended to show that Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election win was due to Russian interference.
She said Obama and senior officials in his administration had “[laid] the groundwork for … a years-long coup” against Trump after his victory over Hillary Clinton by “manufacturing intelligence” to suggest that Russia had tried to influence the election. That included using a dossier prepared by a British intelligence analyst, Christopher Steele, that they knew to be unreliable, Gabbard claimed.
The post-election intelligence estimates contrasted with findings reached before the election, which indicated that Russia probably was not trying to interfere.
In extraordinary comments calling for prosecutions, she added:
The information we are releasing today clearly shows there was a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of our government.
Their goal was to subvert the will of the American people and enact what was essentially a years-long coup with the objective of trying to usurp the President from fulfilling the mandate bestowed upon him by the American people.
No matter how powerful, every person involved in this conspiracy must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, to ensure nothing like this ever happens again. The American people’s faith and trust in our democratic republic and therefore the future of our nation depends on it.
Indigenous leaders have warn higher education institutions will close if the funding-slashing 2026 budget proposal passes, Meliss Hellmann reports:
Former Australian PM Scott Morrison to testify before US House panel on China
The former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison will testify at a US House panel hearing next week about countering China’s “economic coercion against democracies,” the committee said on Friday.
Rahm Emanuel, the former US ambassador to Japan, will also testify before the House select committee on China.
Relations with China, already rocky after Australia banned Huawei from its 5G broadband network in 2018, cooled further in 2020 after the Morrison government called for an independent investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 virus.
China responded by imposing tariffs on Australian commodities, including wine and barley and limited imports of Australian beef, coal and grapes, moves described by the United States as “economic coercion”.
Morrison was defeated in a bid for reelection in 2022. His successor, Anthony Albanese, visited China this week, underscoring a warming of ties.
Updated
Away from the main story on the blog today, Japan’s top tariff negotiator, Ryosei Akazawa, said on Saturday he planned to visit Washington next week to hold further ministerial-level talks with the United States.
Tokyo hopes to clinch a deal by a 1 August deadline that will avert President Donald Trump’s tariff of 25% on imports from Japan.
“I intend to keep on seeking actively an agreement that is beneficial to both Japan and the United States, while safeguarding our national interest,” Akazawa told reporters in the western region of Osaka, according to Reuters.
Akazawa was visiting Osaka to host a US delegation, led by treasury secretary Scott Bessent, that participated in the US national aay event at World Expo 2025. Akazawa said he did not discuss tariffs with Bessent.
Here is the Guardian’s story on Donald Trump’s plans to sue the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch over its Jeffrey Epstein report:
Donald Trump has sued Rupert Murdoch and two Wall Street Journal newspaper reporters for libel and slander over claims that he sent the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein a lewd letter and sketch of a naked woman.
Trump’s lawsuit on Friday, which also targets Dow Jones and News Corp, was filed in the southern district of Florida federal court in Miami.
The lawsuit seeks at least $10bn in damages.
It came after the Journal reported on a 50th birthday greeting that Trump allegedly sent to Epstein in 2003 that included a sexually suggestive drawing and reference to secrets they shared.
It was reportedly a contribution to a birthday album compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence in Florida after being found guilty of sex-trafficking and other charges in 2021.
“A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist, mimicking pubic hair,” the Journal reported of the alleged drawing. The letter allegedly concluded: “Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
Trump vehemently denied the Journal report and claimed the letter was fake. He said on Truth Social that he warned Murdoch, the founder of News Corp, the newspaper’s parent company, that he planned to sue.
Updated
Donald Trump has sued Rupert Murdoch and two Wall Street Journal newspaper reporters for libel and slander over claims that he sent the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein a lewd letter and sketch of a naked woman.
In the filing, Trump calls the Wall Street Journal’s report “false and defamatory” and demands at least $10bn in damages and court costs from Rupert Murdoch, two Wall Street Journal reporters, News Corporation chief executive Robert Thomson and related corporate entities.
Read the court documents in full at the below link:
A lawsuit. Angry calls to editors. Public denunciations. In the wake of the Wall Street Journal’s story claiming Donald Trump contributed to a “bawdy” letter to the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein – featuring a drawing of a naked woman’s silhouette around a typewritten personal message – the president’s relationship with the outlet’s proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, appears on the surface to have deteriorated from temperamental to terminal.
Just a few days ago, the 94-year-old mogul was spotted among the president’s high-profile guests at the Fifa Club World Cup final. Following the publication of the article, however, Murdoch now finds himself on the president’s lengthy list of media opponents threatened with court action.
In an unprecedented environment in which a sitting president regularly takes direct aim at the media, there have been numerous claims of big outlets making decisions that make life easier for their billionaire owners. Yet the Journal published the Epstein allegations even after Trump picked up the phone to its British editor, Emma Tucker, to demand that she ditch the story. Trump also claims Murdoch himself was approached to stop the article, to no avail.
According to some media watchers, it is the latest sign that Murdoch is taking a different approach to Trump’s return than some of his fellow billionaire moguls. Even before the Epstein story dropped on Thursday, Murdoch’s Journal continued to criticise Trump from the right over some of his early decisions.
The justice department said in the court filings that it will work with prosecutors in New York to make appropriate redactions of victim-related information and other personally identifying information before transcripts are released.
“Transparency in this process will not be at the expense of our obligation under the law to protect victims,” Todd Blanche, the US deputy attorney general wrote.
But despite the new push to release the grand jury transcripts, the administration has not announced plans to reverse course and release other evidence in its possession. Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, had hyped the release of more materials after the first Epstein files disclosure in February sparked outrage because it contained no new revelations.
A judge would have to approve the release of the grand jury transcripts, and it’s likely to be a lengthy process to decide what can become public and to make redactions to protect sensitive witness and victim information.
The records would show testimony of witnesses and other evidence that was presented by prosecutions during the secret grand jury proceedings, when a panel decides whether there is enough evidence to bring an indictment, or a formal criminal charge.
Trump administration requests release of Epstein court documents
The US Department of Justice asked a federal court on Friday to unseal grand jury transcripts in Jeffrey Epstein’s case at the direction of Donald Trump amid a firestorm over the administration’s handling of records related to the wealthy financier.
The move – coming a day after a Wall Street Journal story put a spotlight on Trump’s relationship with Epstein – seeks to contain a growing controversy that has engulfed the administration since it announced that it would not be releasing more government files from Epstein’s sex trafficking case.
Todd Blanche, the US deputy attorney general, filed motions urging the court to unseal the Epstein transcripts as well as those in the case against British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. Epstein killed himself in 2019 shortly after his arrest while awaiting trial.
The justice department’s announcement that it would not be making public any more Epstein files enraged parts of Trump’s base in part because members of his own administration had hyped the expected release and stoked conspiracies around the well-connected financier.
Trump’s demand to release the grand jury transcripts came after the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday on a sexually suggestive letter that the newspaper says bore Trump’s name and was included in a 2003 album for Epstein’s 50th birthday.
The letter bearing Trump’s name includes text framed by the outline of what appears to be a hand-drawn naked woman and ends with, “Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret,” according to the newspaper. The outlet described the contents of the letter but did not publish a photo showing it entirely.
Trump denied writing the letter, calling it “false, malicious, and defamatory” and promised to sue. Trump said he spoke to both to the paper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, and its top editor, Emma Tucker, and told them the letter was “fake”.
In other developments:
Attorney general Pam Bondi called the case “a matter of public concern” in a formal request asking a federal judge to unseal grand jury transcripts from the 2019 investigation into Epstein, the late sex offender and longtime associate of Donald Trump.
Dick Durbin, the senior Democrat on the senate judiciary committee wrote to Bondi to ask about the work of the 1,000 FBI personnel who reviewed approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records in March. “My office was told that these personnel were instructed to ‘flag’ any records in which President Trump was mentioned”, Durbin wrote. “What happened to the records mentioning President Trump once they were flagged?” he asked.
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has called for Barack Obama and former senior US national security officials to be prosecuted after accusing them of a “treasonous conspiracy” intended to show that Trump’s 2016 presidential election win was due to Russian interference.
The Trump administration has decided to destroy $9.7m worth of contraceptives rather than send them abroad to women in need. A state department spokesperson confirmed that the decision had been made – a move that will cost US taxpayers $167,000.
Marco Rubio, the secretary of state barred Brazilian supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes from the United States in retaliation for the prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil who has been charged for his role in allegedly leading an attempted coup following his loss in the 2022 election.
Democrats are condemning CBS for its decision to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, noting the news comes a few days after its host criticized the network’s parent company, Paramount, for settling a $16m lawsuit with Donald Trump. Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who appeared as a guest on Colbert’s show on Thursday night, later wrote on social media: “If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better.”
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