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      Judge bars Trump administration from cutting funding to University of California

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      The Trump administration cannot fine the University of California or summarily cut the school system’s federal funding over claims it allows antisemitism or other forms of discrimination, a federal judge ruled late on Friday in a sharply worded decision.US district judge Rita Lin in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction barring the administration from cancelling funding to the university based on alleged discrimination without giving notice to affected faculty and conducting a hearing, among other requirements.The administration over the summer demanded the University of California, Los Angeles, pay $1.2bn to restore frozen research funding and ensure eligibility for future funding after accusing the school of allowing antisemitism on campus. UCLA was the first public university to be targeted by the administration over allegations of civil rights violations.It has also frozen or paused federal funding over similar claims against private colleges, including Columbia University.In her ruling, Lin said labor unions and other groups representing UC faculty, students and employees had provided “overwhelming evidence” that the Trump administration was “engaged in a concerted campaign to purge ‘woke’, ‘left’ and ‘socialist’ viewpoints from our country’s leading universities”.“Agency officials, as well as the president and vice-president, have repeatedly and publicly announced a playbook of initiating civil rights investigations of pre-eminent universities to justify cutting off federal funding, with the goal of bringing universities to their knees and forcing them to change their ideological tune,” Lin wrote.She added: “It is undisputed that this precise playbook is now being executed at the University of California.”At UC, which is facing a series of civil rights investigations, she found the administration had engaged in “coercive and retaliatory conduct in violation of the first amendment and 10th amendment”.Messages sent to the White House and the US Department of Justice after hours on Friday were not immediately returned. Lin’s order will remain in effect indefinitely.The president of the University of California, James B Milliken, has said the size of the UCLA fine would devastate the UC system, whose campuses are viewed as some of the top public colleges in the nation.UC is in settlement talks with the administration and is not a party to the lawsuit before Lin, who was nominated to the bench by Joe Biden, a Democrat. In a statement, the university system said it “remains committed to protecting the mission, governance and academic freedom of the university”.The administration has demanded UCLA comply with its views on gender identity and establish a process to make sure foreign students are not admitted if they are likely to engage in anti-American, anti-western or antisemitic “disruptions or harassment”, among other requirements outlined in a settlement proposal made public in October.The administration has previously struck deals with Brown University for $50m and Columbia University for $221m.Lin cited declarations by UC faculty and staff that the administration’s moves were prompting them to stop teaching or researching topics they were “afraid were too ‘left’ or ‘woke’”.Her injunction also blocks the administration from “conditioning the grant or continuance of federal funding on the UC’s agreement to any measures that would violate the rights of plaintiffs’ members under the first amendment”.She cited efforts to force the UC schools to screen international students based on “’anti-western” or “‘anti-American’” views, restrict research and teaching, or adopt specific definitions of “male” and “female” as examples of such measures.Donald Trump has decried elite colleges as overrun by liberalism and antisemitism.His administration has launched investigations of dozens of universities, claiming they have failed to end the use of racial preferences in violation of civil rights law. The Republican administration says diversity, equity and inclusion efforts discriminate against white and Asian American students. More

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      Turmoil and tensions at FDA after dramatic exit of top drug regulator

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      After the dramatic ousting of the top drug regulator at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) two weeks ago, officials have scrambled to find a replacement in a process that has revealed the agency’s internal cracks and tensions.It’s troubling news for a regulatory agency that has previously enjoyed a reputation for stability and consistency.On Tuesday, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the top spot at the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) would be filled by a surprising candidate.Richard Pazdur is a respected oncology expert and longtime FDA employee – that’s not the surprising part. But he reportedly turned down the position when he was approached last week, according to Pink Sheet. That’s when top leaders began searching for other candidates.“It boggles the mind,” said Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest and a former associate commissioner at the FDA. “Reversals upon reversals.”The news comes after several upheavals at the FDA.George Tidmarsh, who was only appointed as CDER director in late July, resigned in early November following accusations of retaliation against a former pharmaceutical business partner and reports of strife within the agency. Tidmarsh was accused, in an explosive lawsuit, of using his position to harm his former business partner.View image in fullscreenIn the days before his ouster, Tidmarsh had opposed a new form of rapid approval, he told Stat News. The new program, called “Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher”, promised the rapid reviews of drugs – but Tidmarsh said he questioned the legality of the plan.Tidmarsh also reportedly sparred with Vinay Prasad, simultaneously the agency’s chief medical and scientific officer and the director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), after Prasad repeatedly bypassed Tidmarsh to ask CDER employees to do work for him.The HHS did not respond to the Guardian’s questions about power struggles between Tidmarsh and Prasad, but the agency did confirm that Tidmarsh was no longer employed there.“Secretary Kennedy expects the highest ethical standards from all individuals serving under his leadership and remains committed to full transparency,” said Emily Hilliard, press secretary.Prasad himself was subject to reversals. He was forced to resign in July, but he returned unexpectedly less than a week later. FDA chief Marty Makary reportedly worked to bring him back.“Prasad has obviously been very aggressive, and he’s not been softened by the experience of getting fired – if anything he seems to feel that he has the wind at his back because he was restored,” Lurie said. “But none of it speaks well to the kind of relations between the center directors that are necessary to make the place work.”The degree of discord among top FDA officials is “very unusual”, Lurie said.Before the job was filled by Pazdur, one CDER employee told the Guardian that “I would never take it” because the position would be a “career killer” in the turnover and tumult at the agency.“Plus, I’d have Vinay Prasad bitching at me or about me non-stop,” said the employee, who asked for anonymity to protect their job.After Tidmarsh’s departure, several longtime employees said they were not interested in the position, and Sara Brenner, principal deputy commissioner at the FDA, sent an email on Friday to some CDER employees asking whether any of them wanted to apply.“The whole process of appointments at FDA in the current administration has been an enormous departure from accepted practices,” Lurie said. “The degree of upheaval at the agency is really difficult to overestimate and leaves people in the agency disconcerted.”Opening up the position to large numbers of employees “reeks of desperation” and gives the impression that FDA leaders struggled to fill the job, he said. But Pazdur has “the right qualifications”, and choosing an FDA insider might shore up confidence and morale, Lurie added.“There’s a sense among people who have worked at the agency for a while that they’re under siege by people who have come from the outside with only limited understanding of the way that FDA works and that they would be better served with somebody who actually understands the institution,” he said.Lurie notes that the pharmaceutical industry values stability at the FDA more than anything. There is a core belief in the industry – and among the public – that FDA review is valuable in order to maintain trust and safety. “Predictability from day to day is really what they want, and otherwise, everything is in upheaval,” Lurie said.The FDA has developed careful and relatively uncontroversial processes over the decades for evaluating drugs, biologics and medical devices.“But now, everything is up for grabs,” Lurie said. “Suddenly, we have people who can get their drug reviewed in a one-day meeting.”In addition to disrupting its regulatory work, the chaos at the FDA may also undermine the credibility of its experts in general, particularly as top officials within the administration continue to attack scientific expertise, Lurie said.“If the assault on government continues at the pace that it has,” he said, the idea that the government is not to be trusted “could actually become true”. More

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      Welcome to the great unwokening of Hollywood! Shame no one can be bothered to turn up | Jason Okundaye

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      I was on a walk around my local area in London when I was stopped in my tracks by a young man sauntering past me, wearing stone-wash jeans, a pair of shades and a “Reagan-Bush ’84” T-shirt. He gave off an incredibly smug air but, to be fair, he did look good. It’s a nice T-shirt, not like those garish Reform-branded football kits, so I could see why it might be appealing. A quick search informed me that for gen-Z rightwingers in the US, it has become the “conservative take on a band shirt or the once-ubiquitous Che Guevara tee”.That casual display of conservative aesthetics reminded me of something else too: a much discussed cover of New York magazine from earlier this year, after Trump 2.0’s inauguration, which showed young rightwingers celebrating as they “contemplate cultural domination”.“Conservatism – as a cultural force, not just a political condition – is back in a real way for the first time since the 1980s,” the journalist Brock Colyar wrote. Perhaps, given the way the British and American cultural spheres seem more enmeshed than ever, it was only a matter of time before I happened upon a Republican T-shirt in my back yard.View image in fullscreenThe US right has long had designs on controlling culture – frustrated by the idea that, despite many political successes, the arts remain in the grip of a liberal-left orthodoxy. (It’s neatly echoed in Britain by debates about BBC “wokeness”.) If there is anything members of the Maga movement want more than their guys in office, it is to feel that their worldview is reflected back to them whenever they turn on a screen or head into a gallery. That is what lies behind Donald Trump’s attacks on the Smithsonian museum, which he seeks to purge of “improper ideology”, and his threatened imposition of 100% tariffs on non-US-made films.But as we draw to the close of the year, what has come to pass from this prediction of a conservative seizure of culture? There were early claims of victory. In the Atlantic, after the latest season of The White Lotus came out, the commentator Helen Lewis wrote that it was “the first great work of art in the post-woke era”. The critic Kevin Maher in the Times proclaimed simply that “woke is dead” and that “middle-aged white men” are back in – he cited the return of Mel Gibson, who has been repeatedly accused of bigotry, and his forthcoming follow-up to The Passion of the Christ.What caused the biggest stir, however, was the trajectory of Sydney Sweeney, the breakout Euphoria actor who fronted an advertising campaign by American Eagle that played with the idea of her having “great jeans/genes”. Some critics saw the advert as flirting with white supremacist eugenics. Meanwhile, Sweeney, who was reported to have registered as a Republican voter in Florida a few months before Trump’s election, has been hailed as representing a return to more “traditional”, white-centric beauty standards in the culture.View image in fullscreenEarlier this month, when addressing the controversy in an interview for GQ, the journalist Katherine Stoeffel said the criticism centred around the idea that “in this political climate, white people shouldn’t joke about genetic superiority”, offering Sweeney the opportunity to clarify. With startlingly empty eyes, Sweeney answered: “I think that when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear.” For this, rightwing zealots see her as leading the great unwokening of Hollywood: stars, rejoice! You need no longer kowtow to cancel culture. Perhaps she simply thinks the furore is silly and doesn’t want to entertain it. But presented with the chance to distance herself from such a divisive narrative that’s been projected on her, why would she not?If there is a great popular desire for fewer woke cultural figures, the verdict is still decidedly out: Sweeney’s latest film, Christy, in which she portrays the boxer Christy Martin, has recorded one of the worst opening weekends in box-office history. (It follows on from her box-office bombs of Eden and Americana, which opened in the US this year.) A few flops don’t tell us everything. But as Sweeney is perhaps the most talked about star of the year, it raises a question: the right may be determined to disrupt Hollywood and the arts, but does it actually care enough about it to consistently show up? Buying a political T-shirt is an easy commitment; having to sit through a two-hour biopic to prop up the conservative-leaning lead star, less so.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhatever electoral successes, and no matter how much it attempts to reorder institutions, the right will not enjoy cultural domination because you cannot so easily manufacture popularity. It may cry out for the Super Bowl half-time show to feature a Nashville-approved conservative singer, but it will have to get on Duolingo in time to understand record-breaker Bad Bunny’s 2026 performance, in which he’ll most likely cuss out Trump and ICE entirely in Spanish.Contemporary conservatism has failed to become cool because its instincts are more about edgy provocation than any serious appreciation of art and culture. Great art will always be about expanding our worlds, not making them smaller. Even Kelsey Grammer, arguably Hollywood’s most prominent conservative, knows this: despite being an open Trump supporter, he has affirmed his decades-long commitment to diversity, which includes executive-producing the 2000s sitcom Girlfriends, about four Black women in Los Angeles.Those predictions about a post-woke Hollywood also look laughable considering some of the great woke film successes of the year: take Sinners, an African-American horror film scored with southern Black music, or One Battle After Another, about an ex-revolutionary and his mixed-race daughter fighting against explicitly racist US state authorities. Both have garnered critical success (the former doing very well at the box office) and have Oscars buzz. The young mixed-race actor Chase Infiniti looks in much better stead than Sweeney.In the end, people will queue up for what they want to watch and listen to. When most people ask for culture recommendations, they don’t ask “Is it diverse?” or “Is it conservative?”, they ask, “Is it any good?” So perhaps Sweeney should spend more time letting us know why her films are worth watching rather than what colour her eyes are.

      Jason Okundaye is an assistant newsletter editor and writer at the Guardian. He edits The Long Wave newsletter and is the author of Revolutionary Acts: Love & Brotherhood in Black Gay Britain More

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      US judge bars Trump from cutting off University of California funds

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      A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from withholding federal funding and threatening hefty fines against the University of California amid the administration’s attempts to coerce elite US universities into adopting and promoting conservative ideals.US district judge Rita Lin of San Francisco issued the preliminary injunction late Friday, saying the government was not allowed to demand payments from the California school system over the administration’s claims that it violates civil rights by allowing antisemitism and practising affirmative action.In her ruling, Lin said that the plaintiffs – who include UC faculty, researchers and students – have submitted “overwhelming evidence” illustrating the Trump administration’s “concerted campaign to purge ‘woke,’ ‘left’ and ‘socialist’ viewpoints from our country’s leading universities”.Lin ruled that the government had a “playbook of initiating civil rights investigations” at universities in order to cut federal funding, “bringing universities to their knees and forcing them to change their ideological tune”.In July, the Trump administration froze $584m in federal funding for the University of California, Los Angeles, while accusing the university of discrimination and violating civil rights over its handling of the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests on campus. The administration claimed UCLA was “acting with deliberate indifference in creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students”.In October, the administration proposed a deal to nine prominent universities in the US that promised funding in exchange for schools imposing policies and changes that included banning race or sex as considerations in admissions and hiring and removing departments that “purposefully punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas”.While the University of California school system was not offered the deal, the University of Southern California – a private institution – was.California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, responded to the offer with a warning that any California universities that signed Trump’s proposed settlement would lose their state funding.Democracy Forward, a progressive legal advocacy group, called the Trump administration’s efforts to influence policy at universities “strong-arm tactics”.“This is not just a harmful attempt to stifle speech, it is a betrayal of the constitution and a dangerous step toward autocracy,” the group said in a statement. More

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      Trump ends support for Marjorie Taylor Greene amid growing Epstein feud

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      Donald Trump announced Friday that he is withdrawing his support and endorsement of Republican lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene, a longtime ally and previously fierce defender of the president and the Maga movement.Trump’s move away from Greene came just hours after she said in an interview she thought the president’s attempts to stop the release of the files related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein is “insanely the wrong direction to go”.“I am withdrawing my support and endorsement of ‘Congresswoman’ Marjorie Taylor Greene, of the great state of Georgia,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Friday evening. “All I see ‘Wacky’ Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!”Trump said he would give his “unyielding support” to a primary challenge against her “if the right person runs”. Greene currently represents Georgia’s 14th congressional district.Earlier on Friday, Greene told Politico that Trump should not be trying to stop the release of the Epstein files when rising costs in the US are making it difficult for even the president’s own supporters to pay their bills.“It’s insanely the wrong direction to go. The five-alarm fire is healthcare and affordability for Americans. And that’s where the focus should be,” Greene said.“Releasing the Epstein files is the easiest thing in the world. Just release it all. Let the American people sort through every bit of it, and, you know, support the victims. That’s just like the most common sense, easiest thing in the world. But to spend any effort trying to stop it makes – it just doesn’t make sense to me.”Greene has spent the past few months voicing opinions that are at odds with those of the White House and some of her Republican colleagues. Earlier this week, Trump pushed back against criticism from Greene, saying she had “lost her way” after she accused him of paying too much attention to foreign affairs and not enough to the rising cost of living in the US.Greene responded to Trump’s remarks on X a day after, saying that “the only way is through Jesus”.“That’s my way, and I’ve definitely not lost it. Actually I’m working hard to put my faith into action,” she posted.Escalations have increased since Trump’s return to office, as the 51-year-old has increasingly broken with the party on domestic and foreign policy. She criticised the White House for its plans to send “billions of dollars” in weapons to Ukraine and departed from the Republican party’s traditional support for Israel by calling its war in Gaza a “genocide”.In an interview with the Washington Post, the Georgia congresswoman spoke about her discontent with congressional leaders of her own party, including the House speaker, Mike Johnson, amid the government shutdown that ended this week.During the shutdown, she sided with Democrats in their push to provide healthcare subsidies, a rare move for a Republican. More

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      Epstein was texting US House member during 2019 hearing with Michael Cohen

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      Newly released documents from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate show the convicted sex offender appeared to be texting with a member of Congress during a 2019 House hearing with Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former fixer and personal attorney, and that those messages may have influenced the lawmaker’s questioning.The documents provided to Congress this week include transcripts suggesting Epstein was in direct contact with the lawmaker as the hearing unfolded, the Washington Post reports.Although the transcripts do not name the lawmaker Epstein was texting during the February 2019 hearing, an analysis by the Post suggests it was Stacey Plaskett, the US Virgin Islands’ non-voting Democratic delegate. By matching the timestamps of the messages with video of the hearing, the analysis concluded that Plaskett was the member of Congress in contact with Epstein.At the time, Cohen was appearing before the House oversight committee to testify against Trump, accusing him of racism, financial fraud and directing hush-money payments to conceal his extramarital affairs. Trump denied all of these allegations.“Cohen brought up RONA – keeper of the secrets,” Epstein texted the person, referring to former Trump executive assistant Rhona Graff, but misspelled her name.“RONA??” the person responded. “Quick I’m up next is that an acronym,” the person added, suggesting they would question Cohen soon.Plaskett’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian. Her chief of staff told the Post that she was “not in a position to confirm or not” whether the congresswoman was texting with Epstein during the hearing.When Plaskett questioned Cohen during the hearing, she asked about Trump associates that he had mentioned previously and if there were “other people that we should be meeting with?”“So Allen Weisselberg is the chief financial officer in The Trump Organization,” Cohen replied.“You’ve got to quickly give us as many names as you can so we can get to them,” Plaskett jumped in to say. “She is Ms Rhona, what is Ms Rhona’s – … ”“Rhona Graff is the – Mr Trump’s executive assistant … She was – her office is directly next to his, and she’s involved in a lot that went on,” Cohen replied.This interaction is part of the more than 20,000 pages released Wednesday that reignited a long-running scandal over Epstein’s relationship with the rich and powerful. Democratic lawmakers said the messages, along with three newly disclosed emails, suggest Trump may have known more about Epstein’s activities than he has suggested in public.In another instance on the day of the hearing, Epstein texted the person: “Are you chewing”. One minute before, a live television feed of the hearing had cut to Plaskett, as she appeared to be chewing.“Not any more,” the person replied to Epstein. “Chewing interior of my mouth. Bad habit from middle school.”Plaskett was the first non-voting delegate to the House to serve as an impeachment manager during Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate in 2021 for inciting the 6 January attack on the US Capitol. She represents the US Virgin Islands, a territory that does not have a vote in Congress. More

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      Trump news at a glance: Pam Bondi announces investigation into Trump’s adversaries’ ties to Jeffrey Epstein

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      Pam Bondi announced on Friday afternoon that she had assigned Jay Clayton, the interim US attorney for the southern district of New York, to lead the investigation into Donald Trump’s political adversaries and their ties to Jeffrey Epstein, hours after the president directed her to do so.“Jay Clayton is one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country, and I’ve asked him to take the lead,” the US attorney general said of the lawyer, who also served as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) during Trump’s first administration. “As with all matters, the department will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people.”The move represents an apparent departure from a July memo issued by the justice department and the FBI that stated officials had found nothing in the Epstein files that warranted the opening of further inquiries. Investigators “did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties”, the memo said.Bondi announces investigation into Epstein ties to Trump’s Democratic adversariesThe move comes as Trump has cranked up his intense pressure campaign on congressional Republicans to oppose the full release of the justice department’s files related to Epstein, before a crucial and long-awaited House vote on the matter next week that many Republicans are expected to support.The bombshell release of scores of Epstein’s emails has shone a spotlight on the president’s long history of involvement with the notorious sex trafficker, including revelations that he knew more about Epstein’s conduct than he has previously let on.On Friday morning, Trump declared that he would ask the Department of Justice to investigate Epstein’s ties with Democrats, not Republicans, singling out Bill Clinton, Larry Summers and Reid Hoffman. Trump also paradoxically referred to the “Epstein hoax” and called it a “scam”.Read the full storyTrump says he will take legal action against the BBC, despite its apologyOn Friday evening, the US president told reporters aboard Air Force One “we’ll sue them for anywhere between a billion and $5bn, probably sometime next week. We have to do it.”The BBC sent a personal apology to Trump on Thursday, but said there was no legal basis for him to sue the public broadcaster over a documentary his lawyers called defamatory.Read the full storyEpstein advised Bannon during 2018 pro-Trump media campaignThe convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein apparently served as a behind-the-scenes adviser to the former Trump official and Maga influencer Steve Bannon during an August 2018 media campaign to defend Trump and his agenda, and to promote Bannon’s media ventures.Text messages released by the House oversight committee on Wednesday detail a six-day exchange between the men from 17 to 23 August, and show Epstein coaching Bannon on television appearances and political messaging.Read the full storyUS military planning for divided Gaza with ‘green zone’ secured by international and Israeli troopsThe US is planning for the long-term division of Gaza into a “green zone” under Israeli and international military control, where reconstruction would start, and a “red zone” to be left in ruins.Foreign forces will initially deploy alongside Israeli soldiers in the east of Gaza, leaving the devastated strip divided by the current Israeli-controlled “yellow line”, according to US military planning documents seen by the Guardian and sources briefed on American plans.Read the full storyGeorgia prosecutor to take over last remaining criminal case against TrumpThe only remaining criminal case against Donald Trump has been revived after the head of Georgia’s prosecutor’s council appointed himself to replace Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, who was removed from the election interference case in September.Read the full storyTrump reverses course and cuts tariffs on US food importsDonald Trump moved to lower tariffs on food imports, including beef, tomatoes, coffee and bananas, in an executive order on Friday as the White House fights off growing concerns about rising costs.The new exemptions take effect retroactively at midnight on Thursday and mark a sharp reversal for Trump, who has long insisted that his import duties are not fueling inflation. They come after a string of victories for Democrats in state and local elections in Virginia, New Jersey and New York City, where affordability was a key topic.Read the full storyUS tariffs on Swiss goods cut to 15% in deal struck with Trump administrationDonald Trump agreed to cut US tariffs on Switzerland from 39% to 15% as part of a new trade pact, lowering duties that strained economic ties and hit Swiss exporters.The two countries have signed a “non-binding memorandum of understanding”, the Swiss government announced, following bilateral talks in Washington and intense lobbying by Swiss firms.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Americans should “raise hell” to protect US national parks through the “nightmare” of Donald Trump’s presidency, according to a former National Park Service director.

      The head of an antisemitism watchdog has come out against the Anti-Defamation League for its “divisive, hyperbolic and aggressive response” to Zohran Mamdani’s election victory.

      A federal bankruptcy court judge on Friday said he would approve OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma’s latest deal to settle thousands of lawsuits over the toll of opioids that includes some money for thousands of victims of the epidemic.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 13 November 2025. More

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      Bondi assigns prosecutor to lead investigation into Trump adversaries over Epstein ties – live updates

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      Attorney general Pam Bondi announced today that she has assigned Jay Clayton, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, to lead the investigation into Donald Trump’s political adversaries and their ties to Jeffrey Epstein.Earlier, Trump called the latest release of emails that renewed focus on the president’s relationship with the late sex-offender a “hoax”, and directed the justice department to launch a probe into former president Bill Clinton, Democratic donor and entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, and former treasury secretary Larry Summers (who served under Clinton). “This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats,” the president wrote on Truth Social earlier.Bondi described Clayton, who previously served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first administration, as “one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country”. She added: “As with all matters, the Department will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people.”Donald Trump announced on Friday that he is “withdrawing the nomination of Donald Korb” to be the Internal Revenue Service’s top lawyer, days before Korb was expected to be confirmed by the Senate.The president cited no reason for suddenly abandoning Korb in a brief post on his social media platform, but the reversal came just 24 hours after Laura Loomer, a far-right podcaster who holds unusual sway over Trump’s personnel decisions, posted a thread on X attacking Korb for supposedly “supporting Democrats and anti-Trump RINOs” and demanded that his nomination “should immediately be revoked.”Loomer, a racist conspiracy theorist whose closeness to Trump alarmed some of his allies in the run-up to the 2024 election, immediately took credit, telling her 1.8 million followers on X (a website she was banned from before it was bought by Elon Musk) that Korb was “Loomered”.As the author and double Pulitzer winner James Risen wrote in an assessment of Loomer’s informal role earlier this year, after she met with Trump in the Oval Office and handed him a list of people on the staff of the national security council that she believed were not loyal enough to Trump, leading to six of them being fired:
      Loomer’s power in the Trump administration is ill-defined. Her many critics say she has just been taking credit for moves that Trump was already planning. But Trump himself has said he takes her seriously, so it may be more accurate to describe her as Trump’s de facto national security adviser.
      My colleague, Lucy Campbell, notes that today’s decision to investigate several of the president’s political adversaries represents an apparent departure from a July memo issued by the justice department and the FBI, which stated officials had found nothing in the Epstein files that warranted the opening of further inquiries.Investigators “did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties”, the memo said.

      Donald Trump directed the justice department to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with several prominent Democrats, including former president Bill Clinton, former treasury secretary Larry Summers, and donor and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman. The president’s move, to focus on his rivals’ affiliations and relationships with Epstein, is seemingly his latest effort to distance himself from the renewed focus on his own relationship with the disgraced financier following the latest tranche of documents released by the House oversight committee. Trump went on to claim, baselessly, that the release of emails where Epstein said that the president “spent hours” at the late sex-offenders house, and that he “knew about the girls” was just “another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats”.

      In response, attorney general Pam Bondi announced today that she has assigned Jay Clayton, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, to lead the investigation at the behest of the president. Bondi described Clayton, who previously served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first administration, as “one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country”.

      Donald Trump has agreed to slash US tariffs on Switzerland to 15% as part of a new trade pact, lowering duties that strained economic ties and hit Swiss exporters. The two countries have signed a “non-binding memorandum of understanding”, the Swiss government announced, following bilateral talks in Washington and intense lobbying by Swiss firms. In return, Switzerland will reduce tariffs “on a range of US products”, the statement said. “In addition to all industrial products, fish and seafood, this includes agricultural products from the US that Switzerland considers non-sensitive.”

      The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued a rare condemnation of president Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and advocated for “meaningful immigration reform”. In a special message, the first of its kind in 12 years, the bishops said that “we are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools.” In response, White House border czar, Tom Homan, hit back. “The Catholic church is wrong, I’m sorry. I’m a lifelong Catholic,” he said. “I think they need to spend time fixing the Catholic church in my opinion.”
      Attorney general Pam Bondi announced today that she has assigned Jay Clayton, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, to lead the investigation into Donald Trump’s political adversaries and their ties to Jeffrey Epstein.Earlier, Trump called the latest release of emails that renewed focus on the president’s relationship with the late sex-offender a “hoax”, and directed the justice department to launch a probe into former president Bill Clinton, Democratic donor and entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, and former treasury secretary Larry Summers (who served under Clinton). “This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats,” the president wrote on Truth Social earlier.Bondi described Clayton, who previously served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump’s first administration, as “one of the most capable and trusted prosecutors in the country”. She added: “As with all matters, the Department will pursue this with urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people.”Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, has responded to Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the ongoing Epstein investigation – which included the release of three emails this week where Epstein said that the president “knew about the girls” and “spent hours” at his home – is a “hoax” and “Russia scam”.“Our Oversight investigation has Donald Trump panicked and desperate,” Garcia said. “He is trying to deflect from serious new questions we have about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.”He added:
      The President has not explained why he won’t release the files to the American people. Or why sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell was moved to a cushy low-security prison after her interview with Trump’s former personal lawyer.
      Jenna Norton, a program director at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), said that she was put on non-disciplinary administrative leave for “speaking up in my personal capacity” about the “harms that I have been witnessing” inside the agency. In a video posted to TikTok on Thursday, Norton said that being put on leave was “designed to scare and silence me. It was designed to scare and silence my colleagues, and it was designed to scare and silence everyone.”According to Stat News, Norton was also one of the organizers of the “Bethesda Declaration” letter signed by hundreds of NIH staffers, calling on director Jay Bhattacharya to listen to their concerns about the direction of the agency.Given that the president has no public events or meetings scheduled today, a White House official tells the press pool that Donald Trump “held calls with Thailand and Cambodia in an effort to mediate the most recent conflict” and “engaged with Malaysia as well to help end the violence”.Federal immigration agents will conduct their next major operation in Charlotte, according to the county’s sheriff.In a statement on Thursday, Garry McFadden confirmed that his office was “contacted by two separate federal officials confirming that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel will be arriving in the Charlotte area as early as this Saturday or the beginning of next week”.The sheriff added: “At this time, specific details regarding the federal operation have not been disclosed and the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) has not been requested to assist with or participate in any enforcement actions.”In an interview with NPR this week, McFadden said “we cannot control what is going to go on. We just have to better understand it and be prepared to respond and react.”Tom Homan, the president’s border czar, has hit back against the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, after they issued a rare condemnation of the administration’s immigration agenda.“Secure borders save lives, and I wish the Catholic church would understand that,” Homan said, speaking to reporters outside the White House today. “So the Catholic church is wrong, I’m sorry. I’m a lifelong Catholic … I think they need to spend time fixing the Catholic church in my opinion.”The border czar declined to comment on whether options for land strikes in Venezuela had been presented to Trump, or whether ICE agents would soon be conducting their next major operation in Charlotte, North Carolina.Further to my last post on the announcement of a framework agreement, the White House has said in a statement that the US, Switzerland and Liechtenstein aim to conclude negotiations to finalize their trade deal by the first quarter of 2026.Of the $200bn pledged Swiss investments in the United States, at least $67bn will come in 2026, it said, adding that the investments will target a range of sectors including pharmaceuticals, medical devices, aerospace and gold manufacturing.Earlier we reported that US trade representative Jamieson Greer said that the US has “essentially reached a deal with Switzerland”, after the country was hit with a 39% tariff on Swiss exports to the US.My colleague Callum Jones reports that Donald Trump has agreed to slash US tariffs on Switzerland to 15% as part of a new trade pact, lowering duties that strained economic ties and hit Swiss exporters.The two countries have signed a “non-binding memorandum of understanding”, the Swiss government announced, following bilateral talks in Washington and intense lobbying by Swiss firms.The Trump administration agreed to limit US tariffs on Switzerland and Liechtenstein “to a maximum of 15%” under the deal, according to a statement from the Swiss government.This brings US tariffs on Switzerland in line with those on the European Union – allowing Swiss exporters the same treatment as rivals in neighboring countries.In return, Switzerland will reduce tariffs “on a range of US products”, the statement said. “In addition to all industrial products, fish and seafood, this includes agricultural products from the US that Switzerland considers non-sensitive.”Swiss officials also committed to granting a series of quotas for US goods that can be exported to Switzerland on a duty-free basis, including 500 tonnes of beef, 1,000 tonnes of bison meat and 1,500 tonnes of poultry.“The date for implementing these market access concessions will be coordinated with the US to ensure that customs duties are reduced at the same time,” the statement said.A series of exchanges between child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Larry Summers, the former US treasury secretary, showing a relationship as confidantes emerged among the emails released by Republican legislators this week.The exchanges, from 2013 to early 2019, showed the two men sharing personal – and sometimes unseemly – views about politics and relationships.“I’m trying to figure why [the] American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,” Summers wrote to Epstein in a 2017 email. “But hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT.”At the time, Harvard was wrestling with an admissions debate after a formerly incarcerated woman’s admission to a PhD program. Summers, a former president of the university who lost his position in a scandal after making sexist comments about female academics, went on to say in the email to Epstein: “I observed that half of the IQ In [the] world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.”After the Wall Street Journal revealed a previous tranche of emails between Epstein and Summers in a 2023 piece, a spokesperson for Summers told the paper that he “deeply regrets being in contact with Epstein after his conviction”.In the massive trove of 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate released by Republican lawmakers this week are documents that show that Summers maintained congenial contact with the convicted child sex trafficker well into 2019, with the last email exchange occurring only months before Epstein’s arrest.Trump wrote on Truth Social today that he would be asking the DOJ and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Summers, among other prominent Democrats and business leaders.In the emails, Summers and Epstein discuss politics – particularly Summers’ contempt for Trump – as well as the details of philanthropic social networking – and women. Summers, 70, confided in Epstein in a 2019 exchange about his romantic gestures toward an unnamed woman, and being rebuffed.“shes smart. making you pay for past errors,” Epstein wrote in an exchange on 16 March. “ignore the daddy im going to go out with the motorcycle guy, you reacted well.. annoyed shows caring., no whining showed strentgh.”Summers reiterated his regret to the Harvard Crimson on Wednesday. “I have great regrets in my life,” he wrote. “As I have said before, my association with Jeffrey Epstein was a major error of judgement.”The only remaining criminal case against Donald Trump has been revived after the head of Georgia’s prosecutor’s council appointed himself to replace Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, who was removed from the election interference case in September.Pete Skandalakis, a Republican and the executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, the state body that provides legal training and is often charged to mitigate prosecutorial conflicts, wrote in a statement on Friday that he would be taking over for Willis.A grand jury in Atlanta indicted Trump and 18 others in August 2023, using the state’s anti-racketeering law to accuse them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally overturn Trump’s narrow 2020 loss to Joe Biden in Georgia. The alleged scheme included Trump’s call to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, urging him to help find enough votes to beat Biden.The case remains the only criminal prosecution of Trump remaining, but it has been on life support after Willis was disqualified by the Georgia supreme court, which ruled that her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, revealed in dramatic court filings in January 2024, created an impermissible appearance of a conflict of interest.Four people have pleaded guilty. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty. While president, Trump is protected from state-level prosecutions, but the other 14 remaining defendants are still subject to prosecution.“The filing of this appointment reflects my inability to secure another conflict prosecutor to assume responsibility for this case,” Skandalakis said. “Several prosecutors were contacted and, while all were respectful and professional, each declined the appointment.”Trump’s move, to focus on his rivals’ affiliations and relationships with Epstein, is seemingly his latest effort to distance himself from the renewed focus on his own relationship with the disgraced financier, who died by suicide in federal prison in 2019, and the extent to which he was aware of his conduct.The president continued to post on Truth Social today, notably saying that he will direct attorney general Pam Bondi and the FBI to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s “involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, JPMorganChase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him”.Trump went on to claim, baselessly, that this is “another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats”.Flight logs state that former president Bill Clinton travelled on Epstein’s private jet several times. According to several emails from Epstein, released by the House oversight committee, Clinton never visited his private island. Meanwhile, Reid Hoffman – the longtime Democratic donor and venture capitalist – has said he engaged with Epstein in a fundraising capacity for the Massachussets Institute of Technology. Larry Summers, former treasury secretary under Clinton, was a friend of Epstein’s and several emails between the two appear in the committee’s most recent release.In the tranche of documents published this week, Epstein said that Donald Trump “spent hours” at Epstein’s home with one of his victims in an email to co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. The president has maintained the correspondence released by House Democrats was part of the ongoing “hoax” around Epstein, and simply a deflection from their performance during the government shutdown.Several Republican senators have expressed disapproval about a provision tucked into the stopgap spending bill passed this week, which would allow lawmakers to sue the federal government because their phone records were subpoenaed in 2023 by the special counsel investigating Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.“There needs to be accountability for the Biden DOJ’s outrageous abuse of the separation of powers, but the right way to do that is through public hearings, tough oversight, including of the complicit telecomm companies, and prosecution where warranted,” said senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, one of the eight lawmakers whose phone data the FBI sought and obtained.For his part, House speaker Mike Johnson has pledged to repeal the provision next week, and many House Republicans are incensed about the language in the bill.“Interesting seeing my colleagues express outrage over this provision yet still vote for it when they could have been strong and not let the Senate jam the House,” said GOP member Greg Steube, who represents the Florida suncoast. “There was no reason this needed to be in the bill to reopen the government. The Senate used a crisis to pass an unethical provision and now the House is complicit.”Donald Trump has claimed on social media that Democratic lawmakers are doing “everything in their withering power to push the Epstein Hoax again”. This comes after emails released this week by the House oversight committee seem to suggest that the president may have known about Jeffrey Epstein’s conduct.In his post on Truth Social a short while ago, Trump added that the latest batch of documents are being used to “deflect” from Democrats’ “bad policies and losses, specially the SHUTDOWN EMBARRASSMENT, where there party is in total disarray and has no idea what to do”.The president has yet to address the emails, or the wider record release, which included more than 20,000 pages. On Thursday, he took no questions from reporters at an executive order signing in the East Room. He has, however, been resolute about his stance online. White House officials have recapitulated his claims that the new information is merely a distraction.“Some Weak Republicans have fallen into their clutches because they are soft and foolish,” Trump wrote on Friday. “Epstein was a Democrat, and he is the Democrat’s problem, not the Republican’s problem! Ask Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, and Larry Summers about Epstein, they know all about him, don’t waste your time with Trump. I have a Country to run!”Americans should “raise hell” to protect US national parks through the “nightmare” of Donald Trump’s presidency, according to a former National Park Service director, amid alarm over the impact of the federal government shutdown.Jonathan Jarvis claimed the agency is now in the hands of a “bunch of ideologues” who would have no issue watching it “go down in flames” – and see parks from Yellowstone to Yosemite as potential “cash cows”, ripe for privatization.Jarvis, who led the NPS from 2009 to 2017, faced intense scrutiny, a five-hour grilling in Congress and calls for his resignation after closing all 401 national park sites during a previous shutdown, in October 2013.He was certain, despite the backlash, that it was the right thing to do: keeping them open with a skeleton staff would have put parks and their visitors at risk, his team concluded.Over the past month, hundreds of NPS veterans including Jarvis, 72, have watched aghast as most of the agency’s workers were furloughed during the longest shutdown in US history – while the Trump administration kept all national parks open.There have been consequences.A fire at Joshua Tree national park burned through about 72 acres. Yosemite faced a wave of illegal Base jumping. Yellowstone grappled with bear jams.Vandalism included graffiti in Arches national park. A stone wall at Gettysburg national military park was damaged. Trash started to gather at various sites.Thousands of NPS workers are typically around to guide visitors safely through parks, point them in the right direction, swiftly rescue them from danger, keep traffic moving, monitor wildlife and protect the landscape.“You take all of that away – all of those employees – you basically are, on one hand, creating unsafe conditions for the visitor,” Jarvis said, adding: “And you’re putting basically these irreplaceable resources at risk.” More