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      Michigan judge dismisses charges against 15 of Trump’s 2020 fake electors

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      A judge in Michigan dismissed the felony charges against a slate of electors who falsely signed on to documents claiming Donald Trump won the 2020 election in the latest blow to efforts to hold the president and his allies accountable for attempting to overturn the results of the White House race he lost to Joe Biden.Sixteen people were initially charged with eight felonies each related to forgery and conspiracy by the Democratic attorney general, Dana Nessel, in 2023, though one of them had his charges dropped after he agreed to cooperate with the prosecution. The fake electors in Michigan will not go to trial.District court judge Kristen Simmons decided that the state had not provided “evidence sufficient to prove intent”, a requirement for fraud cases. She told a courtroom on Tuesday that the case did not involve the intent of those who orchestrated the scheme, like Kenneth Chesebro and other Trump attorneys – but those who actually signed the documents, Votebeat reported.“I believe they were executing their constitutional right to seek redress,” Simmons said of those who signed the documents.Nessel spoke against the decision in a press conference after, according to Michigan Advance. “The evidence was clear,” she said. “They lied. They knew they lied, and they tried to steal the votes of millions of Michiganders. And if they can get away with this, well, what can’t they get away with next?”Trump supporters in seven swing states signed on as fake electors in the scheme. Some of the fake electors – and, in some cases, those who orchestrated the scheme – were charged for state crimes in five of those states.Protesters outside the courtroom called the case an example of “lawfare” and a “hoax”. After the judge’s comments, those charged and their supporters celebrated the decision and called for consequences against Nessel for bringing the case.An attorney for the former Michigan Republican party co-chairperson Meshawn Maddock said the case was a “malicious prosecution” and that “there needs to be major consequences for the people who brought this,” according to the Associated Press.Some of those who signed on as fake electors in 2020 went on to be real presidential electors for Trump in the 2024 election, when he defeated Kamala Harris to return to the Oval Office beginning in January. More

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      What is the truth about Trump and Epstein? The story keeps getting murkier … | Arwa Mahdawi

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      You have to keep this hush-hush, OK? I have top-secret information to share. You know Donald Trump has been reluctant to release the Epstein files? Well, it’s not because there’s anything nefarious going on. Trump may be an adjudicated sexual predator accused of sexual misconduct by at least 27 women (all of which he denies), who publicly boasted in 2002 about how his “terrific” pal Jeffrey Epstein liked women “on the younger side”, but you shouldn’t read too much into all that. Nor should you overanalyse a Wall Street Journal report claiming White House officials told Trump in May that his name appeared multiple times in the files. Or that House Democrats have now released a sexually suggestive letter and drawing sent to Epstein in 2003 for his birthday that appears to show Trump’s signature, the same note the president has denied writing. Nor should you worry yourself with the photo that has been released showing Epstein holding a novelty check signed by Trump with the suggestion that Epstein “sold” him a woman for $22,500.No, the real reason Trump is being weird about Epstein is … drum roll, please … because the president may or may not have been covertly operating as an FBI informant and investigating the disgraced financier.To be clear: I did not learn this information by scrolling conspiracy theory subreddits at 3am. It comes via the highest levels of government. Last week, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, told a CNN reporter that the president cares deeply about justice for Epstein’s accusers. In fact, when Trump first heard “the rumour” about Epstein, he “kicked him out of Mar-a-Lago; he was an FBI informant to try and take this stuff down”.Why would Johnson make such an explosive and weird claim? Is it because he reckons Maga supporters, some of whom are angry about the president’s handling of the Epstein files, are gullible? With conspiratorial thinking on the rise, is he playing into a proclivity among certain voters to flip Occam’s razor and believe in the most complex explanation? (Macco’s razor, if you will.)Honestly, I don’t know what Johnson was thinking. Nor does anyone else; even the Trump administration was reportedly perplexed by the claim. And on Sunday, Johnson’s office delicately walked back his assertion in a statement: “The speaker is reiterating what the victims’ attorney said, which is that Donald Trump – who kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago – was the only one more than a decade ago willing to help prosecutors expose Epstein for being a disgusting child predator.”The attorney referenced is Brad Edwards, who represents a number of Epstein survivors and said last week that Trump was “friendly” to the cause before doing an “about-face”. As per the Washington Post, Trump “helped” Edwards with efforts against Epstein in 2009. Not quite the same as being an FBI informant.To give Trump his due, he did, as Johnson claimed, bar Epstein from Mar-a-Lago. This reportedly happened in 2007, after the latter behaved inappropriately towards a club member’s teenage daughter. And he doesn’t appear to have been friendly with the paedophile after his sex crime conviction in 2008 – unlike Bill Gates, who met Epstein multiple times after that.Epstein and Trump were good friends for at least 15 years, but there’s little record of them interacting after 2004. Rather than Trump’s concern for abused girls causing the falling out, it seems a bidding war over a Palm Beach mansion may have been to blame. In July, Trump also said he rowed with Epstein because the financier “stole” young women who worked for his Mar-a-Lago spa. The president seemed rather more upset about his “property” being taken than the safety of the women Epstein “stole”.Whatever happened between the pair, questions about their relationship are not going away. The White House is saying the suggestive birthday note is FAKE NEWS and part of a “Democrat hoax” – but is that landing with Maga supporters? Maybe it’s time for Team Trump to sit down and workshop some better deflections. Perhaps blame the brouhaha on an extraterrestrial plot or Hillary Clinton’s emails; anything to stop people from coming to the simplest possible explanation for why Trump wants to bury this story. “Enigma’s never age,” a line on Trump’s supposed birthday note reads. But this Epstein enigma is ageing like raw milk. If only it would sour voters on Trump. More

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      Trump apparently thinks domestic violence is not a crime. That makes sense | Moira Donegan

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      Speaking at a Christian museum on Monday, Donald Trump claimed, falsely, that his deployment of national guard troops to invade the nation’s capital has eliminated crime in Washington. He complained, however, that domestic violence was being counted in the crime statistics, which he claimed meant that the influence of his policy was not being seen as significant enough. “They said, ‘Crime’s down 87%,’” the president claimed, not explaining who “they” were. “I said, no, no, no. It’s more than 87%, virtually nothing. And much lesser things, things that take place in the home they call crime. You know, they’ll do anything they can to find something. If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime. See? So now I can’t claim 100%, but we are. We are a safe city.”If Trump wanted to endorse domestic violence decriminalization, he may take some comfort in the status quo: as it is, about 24% of adult American women have been the victims of “severe physical violence” by an intimate partner, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline; the Centers for Disease Control, meanwhile, puts the proportion of women who have experienced “contact sexual violence, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner” at 41%. and many of those incidents are not reported or not prosecuted – meaning that the perpetrators are free, and that their assaults have not been treated as fully “criminal”.The Trump administration, meanwhile, has been working to make sure that victims of domestic violence have even fewer resources and even scanter opportunities to escape their abusers. The Trump administration has moved to drastically cut federal grants to domestic violence non-profits, which rely heavily on the federal government for funding. The administration has further sought to freeze funding to domestic violence charities that serve trans women victims and participate in diversity, equity and inclusion programming, severely hampering the work of groups that seek to serve marginalized victims from LGBTQ+ or racial minority populations, or to frame domestic violence as a gender justice issue. The administration has also moved to condition domestic violence funding on charities’ willingness to hand over abused women to Ice, a move that would severely limit the ability of undocumented victims to seek help.Trump’s complaint that private violence enacted by men against women in the home should not be considered criminal is of a piece with old and long-abandoned misogynist legal understandings of women’s status, the nature of marriage, and men’s prerogatives in the home, which dictated that women had no rights in the private sphere that their husbands or fathers needed to respect, and that men could enforce their dominance and control over women in private with violence.This notion – that gender, family and sexual relations are private matters that the law has nothing to say about, and that the state has no duty to defend the rights and safety of its women citizens from the violence of its male ones – was dismantled over the long course of the 20th century by feminist legal activists that worked to criminalize domestic battery, establish a woman’s right to sexual refusal, and build institutions that would provide material resources and physical opportunities for women to leave the homes where they were being abused.But Trump’s interpretation of the law has a long history, too. The 17th-century English jurist Matthew Hale, who was cited approvingly by Justice Samuel Alito in the Dobbs decision, articulated the view of men’s prerogatives in the law when he wrote that the rape of a wife by her husband was not illegal, because: “The husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife, for by their mutual matrimonial consent and contract the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband, which she cannot retract.” Hale’s vision of marriage as endowing a man with a right to inflict violence on his wife in private – a quasi-proprietary relationship in which a woman’s initial consent to marriage eliminated any subsequent claims she may have had to her own rights, property or body – is one of total mastery. “I do” is translated into a permanent, irrevocable and horrifyingly inclusive “he can”.It is not surprising that Trump thinks that men’s domestic violence against women should not be a crime. This is the man who once boasted that he liked to “grab ’em by the pussy”; the man who has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen women; who was accused of rape by his first wife (who later rescinded her accusation) and by the writer E Jean Carroll, whose sizable judgment against Trump was upheld by a court on the same day that he gave his remarks. This is the man who is alleged to have barged in on young beauty pageant contestants as they changed, and whose letter to the pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, extolling the “wonderful secret” that the two shared, was made public on Monday as well, complete with a drawing of a nude female form.What might be more surprising is how closely Trump’s view of the prerogatives and entitlements of abusive husbands towards their abused wives mirror his own sense of his prerogatives and entitlements as president towards his abused country. Throughout his second term, Trump has spoken of the 2024 election in terms similar to the way that Hale spoke of the marriage vow: as an irrevocable grant of total power. He believes, he says, that because he won the 2024 election, that there are now no more rights that Americans have that he must respect: that he can discard the will of Congress, fire civil servants at will, kidnap our neighbors and invade our cities.These are not the gestures of a leader who respects his people and seeks to serve them, just as Hale’s vision of marriage is not one in which a husband respects his wife as an equal and seeks to love her. The model is not of partnership, but of domination. This time, it is America herself who is taking the beating.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      in World Politics

      Project 2025 and Donald Trump’s Dangerous Dismantling of the US Federal Government

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      Fair Observer Founder, CEO & Editor-in-Chief Atul Singh, or the Rajput, and retired CIA officer Glenn Carle, or the WASP, examine US President Donald Trump’s cuts to the US federal government. Their wide-ranging discussion blends sharp historical insight with ideological critique, seeking to make sense of today’s Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) world.

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      They emphasize that this topic has global resonance, since the world still depends on the stability and leadership of the United States. The discussion, therefore, becomes both an internal American debate and an international concern.

      Trump’s attack on federal agencies

      Atul and Glenn begin by cataloging specific Trump-era actions they view as evidence of a systematic weakening of the federal apparatus. These include the removal of officials such as Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez and Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Billy Long. They argue that such moves, combined with a broader hollowing out of institutions like the Federal Reserve, the State Department, the CIA, US Agency for International Development and NASA, represent an intentional “gutting” of agencies crucial to governance and public welfare.

      Atul and Glenn insist that these institutions exist not only for technical governance but also for maintaining the credibility of the American democratic model. If the credibility of these institutions collapses, it erodes public trust and damages the US’s global standing.

      Norquist’s philosophy and Ronald Reagan’s agenda

      Glenn situates Trump’s efforts within a longer ideological arc. He traces them back to US President Ronald Reagan’s “revolution,” which reduced faith in government and elevated conservative economic philosophy. Reagan’s agenda, amplified by figures such as Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist — who is famous for wanting to shrink government so small he could “drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub” — and bolstered by conservative think tanks, paved the way for what Glenn calls today’s “Trumpian revolution.”

      Atul adds that the Reagan years were not just an American turning point, but part of a broader global shift toward neoliberalism, deregulation and privatization. The ideological groundwork laid in that era, they contend, continues to shape political agendas today.

      Trump and Project 2025

      Central to the conversation is Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation initiative Atul and Glenn describe as a radical blueprint. Its goals include cutting the federal workforce by half and dramatically expanding presidential powers. They stress that these proposals would not only disrupt government efficiency and accountability but also tilt the balance of power sharply toward the executive branch.

      Atul and Glenn emphasize that the size of the workforce reflects the government’s ability to deliver services, regulate markets and provide stability in times of crisis. Reducing this by half would, in their view, leave the country dangerously exposed.

      Federal layoffs under Trump 2.0

      Atul and Glenn note that Trump’s current plans echo his first term, but with greater intensity. They state that proposals to eliminate 50% of the federal workforce are unprecedented in scope. They interpret these layoffs as more than cost-cutting; they are an ideological purge designed to weaken federal institutions and concentrate loyalty directly under presidential control. Such measures would ripple outward beyond Washington to ordinary citizens who depend on federal programs, grants and regulatory oversight for health, education and economic stability.

      Presidential control: a threat to US democracy?

      Glenn links Trump’s approach to the legal philosophy of Carl Schmitt, “[Adolf] Hitler’s legal theorist,” who defended the primacy of unchecked executive authority in Nazi Germany. Schmitt’s concept of the unitary executive resonates with Trump’s own political movement, Glenn argues, by undermining checks and balances and normalizing near-absolute presidential power. This strikes at the heart of democratic governance.

      Atul points out that the American system was designed around the separation of powers. If that foundation is eroded, the US risks losing what has long been its distinctive democratic safeguard.

      The Republican Party’s evolution

      The conversation also turns to the broader Republican Party. Atul and Glenn argue that decades of conservative activism, think tank influence and shifting party priorities have steered the Grand Old Party toward radical centralization of power. They suggest that what once seemed like outlandish ideas are now mainstream within the Republican platform, particularly under Trump’s leadership. This shift is both political and cultural, representing a redefinition of what conservatism means in the US.

      Fascism, strongmen and the future

      Atul and Glenn conclude with a sober warning: Left unchecked, the United States risks sliding from liberal democracy into what they call a “conservative autocracy.” They point to echoes of strongman politics and fascist ideology, stressing the long-term danger of normalizing authoritarian principles. At the same time, they note Trump’s diverse support base — including many immigrants who align with cultural conservatism and share a disdain for bureaucracy — as evidence that these dynamics are both complex and deeply embedded in American society.

      They highlight that this contradiction of immigrants supporting an anti-immigrant politician reveals how cultural and ideological affinities can often outweigh personal experience. The episode ends as a call to reflect on the fragility of democratic institutions and the vigilance required to protect them.

      [Lee Thompson-Kolar edited this piece.]

      The views expressed in this article/podcast are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Migrant and Seasonal Head Start is a ‘bridge’ for many US families. An order threatens its survival

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      It has been a challenging year for Head Start.The Trump administration first froze funding and cut staff, forcing many centers to close temporarily or permanently. It then asked Congress to eliminate the early childhood education program in a leaked budget proposal (the White House ultimately reversed course).Then, in July, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an executive order excluding some immigrants from accessing a range of federal programs, including Head Start. Its argument: Head Start is equivalent to public welfare, which unauthorized immigrants have not been able to access since the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWOR) of 1996. And Head Start advocates are waiting to learn whether enforcement will begin this week or sometime soon.The term “unauthorized” includes not only undocumented people but also those who entered the US legally but do not qualify for public benefits, such as asylum applicants; trafficking victims; and recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), a program that protects people who came to the US as undocumented minors from deportation and allows them to work.Head Start centers have said they have no protocols for verifying eligibility. The program doesn’t, for example, gather information on citizenship status.Attorneys general from 20 states and a coalition of Head Start organizations filed separate suits in federal court, arguing that the order was unconstitutional. Following the lawsuits, the government backtracked, though only slightly: it delayed enforcement of the rule until 10 September, pending the result of the legal challenges.Experts say this executive order is a broader attempt to disenfranchise immigrants from accessing a wide range of public services. “On its face, this appears designed to ensure that virtually all public supports are unavailable to unauthorized persons,” said Mark Greenberg, who formerly worked as deputy general counsel in the Department of Health and Human Services and also served in its administration for children and families.He said that the government has “a very, very difficult case … The legal question for the courts at this point will be, ‘Is Head Start similar to welfare?’”View image in fullscreenHe believes that this argument will be very difficult to prove. First, welfare is almost always defined as cash assistance or its equivalents, welfare checks or electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards, used for food stamps. Head Start programming is neither. In addition, PRWOR does not give federal agencies the power to define what counts as a public benefit. So the government has to argue that Congress always intended to define Head Start as welfare – something it has never done.Should the executive order stand, it’s hard to estimate the possible impact on Head Start. Estimates suggest that the vast majority of the nearly 755,000 children currently enrolled are US citizens. Only 1.5 million children under 18 living in the US in 2023 were unauthorized, the most recent year for which statistics are available.However, one particular part of Head Start is likely to feel the impact more deeply.Migrant and Seasonal Head Start (MSHS) provides early childhood education and services to approximately 25,000 children whose families work in agricultural labor. These children range in age from infancy to five years old, and the program currently operates in 34 states.The term “migrant” as used in MSHS does not refer to citizenship status. “In our world, a migrant means a family that is moving within a certain distance from their home in pursuit of work,” said Cleo Rodriguez Jr, executive director of the National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association (NMSHSA).Nevertheless, between 37-45% of all farm workers are unauthorized and the order “raises the concern of chilling effects that go far beyond the families [in Head Start]”, Greenberg said. Parents may choose not to enroll eligible children to protect unauthorized family or friends from discovery, denying them the opportunities for social mobility and education that Migrant and Seasonal Head Start provides. And enforcement would theoretically apply to all families seeking Head Start services.Soon after Head Start’s creation in 1965, program administrators realized that itinerant farm workers could not enroll their children in one location year-round. Migrant Head Start began in 1969 to support these families. Seasonal Head Start was added in 1999 as warmer weather due to climate change enabled more agricultural workers to work year-round in one location.View image in fullscreenMSHS works the same as the other Head Starts in a few ways. It also serves infants and children up to age five. All enrolled children receive health services such as developmental and vision screenings and nutritional support.And according to Rodriguez, some of the key features of Head Start’s larger programs began with standards set by Migrant and Seasonal Head Start. The program served children agedup to three years from the beginning, whereas Early Head Start only started in 1995. Similarly, it always offered extended hours so agricultural workers could spend as long in the field as necessary; conventional Head Start did not expand to full-day and year-round care until 1998.“The program that supports agriculture families is really the model for all of Head Start,” Rodriguez said. “We’ve always served the infants and toddlers. We’ve always done the extended hours. We’ve always been flexible.”Every program, by necessity, is different, dictated by the length and yield of each harvest season. “What works in Nebraska doesn’t necessarily work in central Florida, and what works in central Florida doesn’t necessarily work in central Michigan,” he said.Variation even occurs at the same center from year to year. It’s common, Rodriguez said, for growers to ask MSHS staff to extend the program on short notice if the weather suddenly becomes more favorable.MSHS can even be open six or seven days a week and for lengthy hours. “Programs can start deploying buses at 4.35 in the morning, and get the kids to school and put them back to bed,” Rodriguez said.The flexibility that makes MSHS so useful for growers and families also makes it challenging to study, according to early childhood researcher Michael Lopez, who helped design Head Start studies while employed by the administration for children and families from 1991 to 2005.“We would do an assessment at the beginning of the year, an assessment at the end of the year, and you look at progress over the year,” he explained. “A defined academic experience for an MSHS kid could be three months in this location, three months in that location,” he said. In addition, “a lot of these measures were developed for predominantly English-speaking classrooms”, not designed for students learning the language.Nevertheless, Lopez said existing research supports the value of early education on children’s health and development no matter the program. “There’s no question in my mind that it has positive effects,” he said.View image in fullscreenMultiple studies suggest that children of migrant farm workers have among the highest high-school dropout rates in the country, due to a combination of language barriers, frequent moves and even a need to work to support their families.So when Rodriguez kept encountering MSHS graduates who not only completed high school but also went to college, one of his first projects as NMSHSA executive director was to start a summer internship program in Washington DC. Since 2012, 49 interns have worked for organizations including United Farm Workers, UnidosUS and the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators.Maria Espinoza participated in the program in 2021 and worked in agricultural research and policy before starting law school at American University this year. The youngest of seven, she was born in South Carolina to migrant parents during the tobacco harvest. When the family settled in the agricultural community of Immokalee, Florida, they sent her to a center run by Redlands Christian Migrant Association (RCMA).“It was one of the first organizations that we interacted with after we moved,” Espinoza said. She recalls walking to and from class with her parents, interacting with her teachers and her parents attending meetings after their long hours working in the fields.“They were kind of a vehicle for how we settled into our community and the US as a whole,” she said, describing RCMA staff and centers as “pillars of the community”.Two of her siblings found employment at RCMA, with Espinoza’s eldest sister eventually launching her own daycare business. Espinoza’s nieces and nephews now attend RCMA’s charter school.“[MSHS] does so much to fill all those gaps and make a bridge so that both the families and their children are able to succeed,” Espinoza said.Even if the executive order is struck down, families are already more hesitant to engage, according to Rodriguez. Some MSHS parents have already been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).“My parents were both migrant farm workers, and I also did work when I was a kid,” Rodriguez said. “So this is very personal to me.”However, he still has a deep belief not only in the benefits of MSHS but also in America as a whole.“We’re still the greatest country with the greatest opportunities,” he said. More

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      in US Politics

      House committee releases image of ‘sickening’ Trump birthday note to Epstein – US politics live

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      US immigration officers are ramping up immigration sweeps in Los Angeles again after the supreme court reversed a temporary restraining order that banned the Trump administration from stopping people solely based on their race, language or job.In a post on Twitter/X, Greg Bovino, the head of US border patrol in Los Angeles, called the temporary restraining order “very poorly” written and “the worst” he’s ever seen. He also said that border patrol would be starting operations back up again today.“We are going hard in Los Angeles today and are hitting a location as I write this,” Bovino wrote.Immigration officers were forced to pause their sweeping immigration raids after advocacy groups sued the Trump administration for systemically racially profiling brown-skinned people. US district judge in Los Angeles Maame E Frimpong granted the groups a temporary restraining order after finding a “mountain of evidence” that the immigration enforcement tactics were violating the constitution.But the supreme court ruled 6-3 to lift those restrictions on Monday. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who voted to approve the stay on the order, wrote that the Immigration and Nationality Act allows immigration officers to “interrogate any alien or person believed to be an alien as to his right to be or to remain in the United States”. While “ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion” it can be used as a “relevant” factor, he wrote.Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.We start with news that House Democrats on Monday released an image of a sexually suggestive letter and drawing that appears to bear the signature of Donald Trump, the very same note the president had denied writing after reports of its existence were published earlier this year in the Wall Street Journal.The letter, described as “sickening” by one representative, was turned over by lawyers for disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s estate in response to a subpoena from the House oversight committee, and was included in a set of notes sent to the convicted sex offender for his 50th birthday.The image showed a letter that in effect comported with a description in the Journal’s report from July. Inside the sketch of a woman’s torso, the note depicts an imagined conversation between Trump and Epstein, with what appeared to be Trump’s signature below.“The oversight committee has secured the infamous ‘Birthday Book’ that contains a note from President Trump that he has said does not exist,” Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the panel, said in a statement. “It’s time for the president to tell us the truth about what he knew and release all the Epstein files.”The White House did not immediately comment on the letter, but officials sought to discredit the note. Deputy chief of staff for communications, Taylor Budowich, suggested in an X post carrying a different version of Trump’s signature that the letter or the signature had been falsified.“Time for news corp to open that check book, it’s not his signature. DEFAMATION!” Budowich wrote, referencing the defamation suit that Trump filed against News Corp, the parent company of the Journal, over its original story.Maryland representative Jamie Raskin called the letter “sickening” and called for the full Epstein files to be released. Posting on X, he said:
      House Democrats fought to bring this sickening letter into the light while Trump and MAGA mouthpieces assured us it did not exist. Trump even sued the Wall Street Journal for reporting on it!
      We can’t trust a word MAGA says. Release the full Epstein file NOW!
      Read the full story here:In other developments:

      US immigration officers are ramping up immigration sweeps in Los Angeles again after the supreme court reversed a temporary restraining order that banned the Trump administration from stopping people solely based on their race, language or job. In a post on Twitter/X, Greg Bovino, the head of US border patrol in Los Angeles, called the temporary restraining order “very poorly” written and “the worst” he’s ever seen.

      Donald Trump’s second state visit to the UK will see a big policing operation led by drones in the airspace over Windsor, police have said. King Charles is to host the US president and his wife, Melania Trump, at Windsor Castle from 17 to 19 September, where they will be entertained with a ceremonial welcome and state banquet.

      Donald Trump launched a vitriolic attack against Tom Hanks for supposedly being “destructive” and “woke” after one of America’s most beloved actors was snubbed without much explanation by West Point last week. On his social media site on Monday, the US president applauded the alumni association of the US Military Academy (or West Point) for abruptly calling off a ceremony honoring Hanks, twice an Academy award winner who has played numerous military characters and also has a long history of advocating for veterans.

      Donald Trump now cannot claim presidential immunity to get off the hook from paying $83.3m in damages to the writer E Jean Carroll, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday, upholding a jury’s 2024 award against the president for defamation. Trump’s lawyers had pointed to the supreme court’s ruling last year saying the president has immunity for official acts to argue that the damages should be overturned.

      The US supreme court allowed Donald Trump on Monday to keep a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission away from her post for now, temporarily pausing a judicial order that required the reinstatement of the commissioner who the Republican president has sought to oust.

      Intent on vindication after spending four months in prison last year, Donald Trump’s White House trade adviser Peter Navarro asked a federal appeals court on Sunday night to force the justice department to explain why it would not defend his 2022 conviction for defying a January 6 committee subpoena. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump news at a glance: Epstein case haunts Trump as alleged birthday letter released

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      Questions over his friendship with convicted sex offender, Jeffery Epstein, continue to haunt Donald Trump, this time with the release of a birthday letter that Trump had previously denied writing.An image of the birthday letter, the existence of which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal in July, was released by House Democrats after the House oversight committee received the 2003 “birthday book” from Epstein’s lawyers. It is dated three years before allegations of sex abuse by Epstein became public in 2006.The letter contains text of a purported dialogue between Trump and Epstein in which Trump calls him a “pal” and says, “May every day be another wonderful secret.” The text sits within a crude sketch of a silhouette of a naked woman.Trump has previously vehemently denied having written or illustrated the note, dismissing it as “a fake thing” and insisting “these are not my words, not the way I talk”.White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich denounced the release, saying the signature on the letter is not Trump’s while alluding to a defamation suit that Trump filed against News Corp, the parent company of the Wall Street Journal, over its original story.Here are the key stories:House Democrats share image of alleged Trump ‘birthday note’ for EpsteinAttorneys representing the co-executors of Epstein’s estate handed over a copy of the so-called birthday book on Monday after receiving a subpoena from House oversight committee chair James Comer of Kentucky, a Republican.Read the full storyUS immigration officers ramp up sweeps in LA after raid restrictions are liftedUS immigration officers are ramping up immigration sweeps in Los Angeles again after the supreme court reversed a temporary restraining order that banned the Trump administration from stopping people solely based on their race, language or job.Read the full storyTrump UK state visit will see police drones and airspace limits Donald Trump’s second state visit to the UK will see a big policing operation led by drones in the airspace over Windsor, police have said.King Charles is to host the US president and his wife, Melania Trump, at Windsor Castle from 17 to 19 September, where they will be entertained with a ceremonial welcome and state banquet.Read the full storyTrump attacks Tom Hanks after West Point cancels event honoring actorDonald Trump launched a vitriolic attack against Tom Hanks for supposedly being “destructive” and “woke” after one of America’s most beloved actors was snubbed without much explanation by West Point last week.Read the full storyCourt rejects Trump’s attempt to overturn E Jean Carroll’s $83m verdictDonald Trump now cannot claim presidential immunity to get off the hook from paying $83.3m in damages to the writer E Jean Carroll, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday, upholding a jury’s 2024 award against the president for defamation.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      The US supreme court allowed Donald Trump on Monday to keep a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission away from her post for now, temporarily pausing a judicial order that required the reinstatement of the commissioner who the Republican president has sought to oust.

      Intent on vindication after spending four months in prison last year, Donald Trump’s White House trade adviser Peter Navarro asked a federal appeals court on Sunday night to force the justice department to explain why it would not defend his 2022 conviction for defying a January 6 committee subpoena.
      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 7 September 2025. More

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      in US Politics

      Meta hid harms to children from VR products, whistleblowers allege

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      A group of six whistleblowers have come forward with allegations of a cover-up of harm to children on Meta’s virtual reality devices and apps. They say the social media company, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and offers a line of VR headsets and games, deleted or doctored internal safety research that showed children being exposed to grooming, sexual harassment and violence in its 3D realms.“Meta knew that underage children were using its products, but figured, ‘Hey, kids drive engagement,’ and it was making them cash,” Jason Sattizahn, one of the whistleblowers who worked on the company’s VR research, said in a statement. “Meta has compromised their internal teams to manipulate research and straight-up erase data that they don’t like.”Sattizahn and the other whistleblowers, all current or former Meta employees, have disclosed these findings and a trove of documents to Congress, according to the Washington Post, which first reported the allegations. Sattizahn and Cayce Savage, who was Meta’s lead researcher on youth user experience for VR, will appear before the US Senate judiciary subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law on Tuesday.Dani Lever, a Meta spokesperson, said the company has approved 180 studies related to its VR Reality Labs since 2022, which include research on youth safety and wellbeing.“These few examples are being stitched together to fit a predetermined and false narrative,” she said, adding that Meta has introduced features to its VR products to limit unwanted contact and supervision tools for parents.The whistleblower allegations made public on Monday claim that on Meta’s VR products, the company could have done more to ensure children’s safety. The whistleblowers say company managers instructed staff to avoid research that might show evidence of child harm in virtual reality.In one instance, a researcher was reportedly told to “swallow that ick”.In another instance, a researcher was allegedly told to delete information from an interview they had conducted with a German family, according to the Washington Post. During that interview, a teenage boy told the researcher that his brother, who was under the age of 10, had “frequently encountered strangers” in Meta’s VR and that “adults had sexually propositioned his little brother”.The allegations arise as a steady procession of former Meta employees have come forward to criticize the company for not doing enough to protect children from harm on its social media products. Lawmakers have also repeatedly grilled Meta executives for pushing content to youth that promotes bullying, drug abuse and self-harm.At one congressional hearing in January 2024, Republican senator Josh Hawley prodded Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, into publicly apologizing.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’m sorry for everything you have all been through,” Zuckerberg said at the time. “No one should go through the things that your families have suffered, and this is why we invest so much and we are going to continue doing industry-wide efforts to make sure no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer.”Marsha Blackburn, a Republican senator from Tennessee, said the revelations about Meta’s VR products show Congress needs to pass legislation putting guardrails on social media companies.“Instead of heeding serious concerns about widespread child harm on their platforms, Meta silenced employees who dared to come forward, buried egregious evidence, and shamelessly used innocent kids as pawns to line their pockets,” Blackburn said. “These whistleblowers should be commended for having the courage to expose Meta’s disgusting web of lies.”The six whistleblowers are represented by the legal nonprofit Whistleblower Aid. They are scheduled to testify before the subcommittee on Tuesday.The current and former Meta employees have also filed a detailed disclosure to Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. More