Vice-president JD Vance’s attempt to deflect attention away from the Trump administration’s handling of the case against convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has backfired, triggering renewed calls for transparency.
In an interview with Fox News broadcast on Sunday, Vance tried to brush off criticism of the administration’s refusal to release documents related to the scandal, accusing Joe Biden of doing “absolutely nothing” about it when he was in the White House.
Within minutes of the Fox News interview being broadcast, social media began to hum with renewed cries of “release the files!”
The White House has been caught in a bind over the Epstein affair, which spawned conspiracy theories among many of Donald Trump’s supporters which now senior figures in the administration had actively encouraged during the 2024 campaign.
Here are the key US politics stories at a glance:
Vance’s attempt to link Democrats to Epstein renews calls to ‘release the files’
Four days after JD Vance reportedly asked top Trump administration officials to come up with a new communications strategy for dealing with the scandal around the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, the vice-president appears to have put his foot in it, sparking a new round of online outrage even as he tried to defuse the furor.
Nvidia and AMD reportedly agree to pay 15% of China chip sale revenues to US
Nvidia and AMD have agreed to give the US government 15% of their revenues from chip sales in China, under an unprecedented arrangement to obtain export licenses for the semiconductors, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.
Texas redistricting fight ‘could last years’, threatens Greg Abbott
The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, has stepped up his war of words with Democratic lawmakers who have left the state to foil an aggressive redistricting plan aimed at giving his Republican party five additional seats in Congress, saying on Sunday that the fight “could literally last years”.
Court overrides Trump officials’ rollback and blocks fishing in Pacific Islands monument
A federal judge in Hawaii has ruled that commercial fishing is illegal in the Pacific Islands Heritage marine national monument, a federally protected area in the central Pacific Ocean.
Trump orders homeless he passed en route to golf course to leave Washington DC
In a social media post on Sunday, the president demanded homeless residents of Washington DC leave the country’s capital or face eviction, and again promised to use federal officers to jail criminals, even though violent crime in the city was at a 30-year low when he took office in January.
Companies aiding Trump’s immigration crackdown see ‘extraordinary’ revenues
The technology, surveillance and private prison providers arming Trump’s massive expansion and weaponization of immigration enforcement are running a victory lap after reporting their latest financial results.
What else happened today:
Ahead of the a meeting between president Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin scheduled for Friday, our correspondent Shaun Walker has written this analysis about how confusion over the summit shows Putin still calls the shots.
Trump’s second term has seen a sustained assault on democratic institutions – political, judicial, media, cultural and academic – that appears to be only accelerating, writes David Smith in this feature.
Catching up? Here’s what happened 9 August 2025.
