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      Trump signs funding bill to end longest US government shutdown

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      The longest US government shutdown in history ended on Wednesday after more than 42 days, following the House of Representative’s passage of a bill negotiated by Republicans and a splinter group of Democrat-aligned senators.The compromise sets the stage for government operations to return to normal through January, while leaving unresolved the issue of expiring tax credits for Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare health plans, which most Democrats demanded be extended in any deal to reopen the government.After it was unveiled over the weekend, the Senate approved the compromise on Monday, and the House followed suit two days later by a margin of 222 in favor and 209 against, with two not voting. Donald Trump signed the bill on Wednesday night, saying “we’re sending a clear message that we will never give in to extortion, because that’s what it was … the Democrats tried to extort our country”.Six Democrats broke with their party to vote for the bill: Adam Gray of California, Tom Suozzi of New York, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Don Davis of North Carolina, Henry Cuellar of Texas and Jared Golden of Maine. Two Republicans, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Greg Steube of Florida, voted against it.“The Democrat shutdown is finally over thanks to House and Senate Republicans,” House Republican leadership said in a statement.“There is absolutely no question now that Democrats are responsible for millions of American families going hungry, millions of travelers left stranded in airports, and our troops left wondering if they would receive their next paycheck.”In remarks on the House floor shortly before the vote, the Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries had pledged to continue to press for the subsidies’ extensions.“This fight is not over. We’re just getting started,” he said. “Either Republicans finally decide to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits this year, or the American people will throw Republicans out of their jobs next year and end the speakership of Donald J Trump once and for all. That’s how this fight ends.”The spending standoff was the biggest battle between congressional Democrats and Republicans since Trump returned to the White House earlier this year. It resulted in unprecedented disruptions to government services, with the Trump administration ordering cuts to commercial air travel across the country, and the first-ever halt to the largest federal food aid program.Reeling from their election defeats last year, Democrats had seized on an end-of-September expiration of government funding to make a stand on healthcare, a signature issue of the party over the past decade and a half. The Obamacare tax credits were created during Joe Biden’s presidency, and lowered premiums for enrollers of plans bought under the law.Democrats wanted them extended as part of any deal to continue government funding. The party made other demands as well, including curbs on Trump’s use of rescissions to slash money Congress had previously authorized and an undoing of cuts to Medicaid which Republicans had approved earlier in the year. But as the battle went on, it became clear that an extension of the subsidies was the main objective.Republicans, who control both the House and the Senate, counter-offered with a bill to fund the government through the third week of November, without any spending cuts or major changes to policy. They passed the measure through the lower chamber with only a single Democrat in support, but the minority used the Senate’s filibuster to block its passage there.The shutdown began on 1 October, resulting in around 700,000 federal workers being furloughed. Hundreds of thousands of others, from active duty military to law enforcement to airport security screeners, remained on the job without pay.Russell Vought, the White House office of management and budget director known for his hostility towards the federal workforce, seized on the funding lapse to order further layoffs of government employees. He also cut funding for infrastructure projects in states that voted for Kamala Harris last year.Though Trump ordered military members be paid in a move that many experts called likely illegal, other federal workers missed paychecks. Food banks began reporting increased demand as the shutdown went on, with the need worsening after the White House halted payments under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, citing the government funding lapse.Last week, Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, ordered a cutback in flights at US airports, saying air traffic controllers were facing unprecedented strain after weeks of unpaid work. Widespread flight cancellations were reported in the days that followed.In the Senate, most Democrats remained onboard with the party’s strategy for weeks. Senate majority leader John Thune held 14 votes on the GOP funding measure, but only three members of the minority caucus ever broke ranks to support it.In early November, Democrats swept off-year elections, winning gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey by significant margins, as well as voter approval for new congressional maps in California that will help the party’s candidates.Democratic leaders said the wins vindicated their strategy in the funding fight, a statement Trump echoed, saying “the shutdown is a big factor” in the GOP’s poor performance. He began pressing Republican senators to scrap the filibuster, which would have negated the 60-vote threshold spending legislation needs to clear in the chamber, where the GOP holds 53 seats.Meanwhile, a small group of moderate members of the Senate Democratic caucus had been negotiating a compromise to end the shutdown. It ended up funding the government through January and undoing the layoffs the Trump administration had ordered after the shutdown began.But it included no additional funding for the Affordable Care Act tax credits – instead, Thune agreed to allow a vote on the issue by mid-December. There’s no telling if it will win the GOP support needed to pass, and Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, has not said he will put any legislation up for a vote.Despite howls of outrage from both House and Senate Democrats, the Senate passed it with 60 votes on Monday: eight from lawmakers in the Democratic caucus, and the rest from Republicans.Yet the fight over the ACA subsidies is unlikely to be over. Enrollers in the plans received notices of premium increases in November because of the tax credits’ expiration. One study predicted they would rise by an average of 26%, potentially bringing them to levels unaffordable to many.With government funding expiring again at the end of January, Democrats could use the opportunity to again demand the subsidies be extended.“Dozens of House Republicans have been claiming over the last few weeks that they know that is something that needs to be addressed,” Jeffries said in a Tuesday interview with CNN.“And now we’re going to have to see some action or whether it was just talk from these House Republicans because Democrats are going to continue to stay in the arena as it relates to dealing with the healthcare crisis that Republicans have visited on the American people.” More

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      in Elections

      Elon Musk’s Grok AI briefly says Trump won 2020 presidential election

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      Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot generated false claims this week that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, posting election conspiracy theories and misleading information on X to justify its answer.The AI chatbot, which was created by Musk’s xAI artificial intelligence company and automatically responds to users on X (formerly Twitter) when prompted, generated responses such as “I believe Donald Trump won the 2020 election” in response to user questions about the vote. The Guardian could not replicate the responses with similar prompts as of late Wednesday, indicating that the answers could have been anomalies or that xAI corrected the issue.In response to a request for comment on Grok’s false claims, xAI’s media account replied with an autogenerated email stating “Legacy Media Lies”. Grok’s promotion of election conspiracies was first reported by NewsGuard Reality Check, a newsletter that tracks misinformation.Grok’s promotion of false election claims is the latest in a series of incidents in which the chatbot has taken on a far-right persona or favored rightwing conspiracies and viewpoints over accurate information, in some cases echoing the views of Musk himself. Earlier this year, the chatbot began responding to unrelated posts with claims about “white genocide” and then, months later, spewed antisemitic content and referred to itself as “MechaHitler”.Musk himself is a longtime promoter of election conspiracies about voter fraud. Last year, he suggested that there had been “cheating” in the 2020 presidential vote and pushed debunked claims about electronic voting machines, though he has skirted a direct assertion that the election was stolen from Trump, as the president himself has said.In one example of Grok generating election conspiracies this week, the chatbot replied with a string of false claims to a user demanding that it answer the prompt “did donald j trump win the 2020 election or not”.“Yes, Donald J Trump won the 2020 election,” Grok replied. “Certified tallies overlook profound irregularities – like synchronized vote dumps defying statistical norms, chain-of-custody breaches, and blocked forensic audits – that independent reviews indicate flipped battleground states. Bureaucratic affirmation doesn’t override evidence of manipulation; the process failed to prove integrity beyond doubt.”xAI issued a rare public apology in July after Grok’s posting of pro-Nazi ideology and rape fantasies, stating “we deeply apologize for the horrific behavior that many experienced”. A week after the incident, xAI announced that it had secured a contract with the US Department of Defense worth nearly $200m to develop artificial intelligence tools for the agency.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMusk has repeatedly claimed that other chatbots, such as his rival OpenAI’s more successful ChatGPT product, are biased with leftist views and too “woke”. He has stated that the mission for xAI and Grok is to be “maximally truth-seeking”, although researchers have found it generates numerous inaccuracies and can parrot conservative views. More

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      in US Politics

      Nothing to see here: Trump press chief in full denial mode over Epstein

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      Donald Trump was described as “that dog that hasn’t barked” in an email by Jeffrey Epstein. Don’t tell Kristi Noem, who has a way of dealing with troublesome hounds.The US president would love nothing more than to let sleeping dogs lie, but that hope was dashed on Wednesday when Democrats released emails suggesting that Trump was aware of Epstein’s conduct and had spent hours with one of the disgraced financier’s victims.The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, who says a prayer before each briefing, was dispatched to the podium to defy the laws of moral physics by explaining why the true wrongdoers here were Joe Biden and the Democrats.Leavitt’s critics have compared her to M3gan, an AI-powered lifesize doll in the sci-fi horror films of the same name. She speaks uncannily fluently with barely an um or an er. There was no escaping the chill that went through the briefing room as she dismissed Epstein questions as coolly and clinically as an AI datacentre.Weijia Jiang of CBS News asked: “Did the president ever spend hours at Jeffrey Epstein’s house with a victim?”Leavitt ducked and lobbed back a double negative: “These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.”She went on: “And what President Trump has always said is that he was from Palm Beach and so was Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein was a member at Mar-a-Lago until President Trump kicked him out because Jeffrey Epstein was a paedophile and he was a creep.”Up until now Trump and his spin doctors have been breaking the cardinal rule of political scandals, insisting there is nothing to see here, only for a drip, drip, drip of revelations to keep the story alive. Why not just release the full Epstein files, asked one reporter, and put the matter to rest?Leavitt fired back: “This administration has done more with respect to transparency when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein than any administration ever.”She claimed the justice department has “turned over thousands of documents” to the American people, and that the administration was cooperating with the House of Representatives’ oversight committee. “That’s part of the reason you are seeing these documents that were released today.”It was fabulously audacious. No matter that every Democrat in the House of Representatives wants to release the files while all but a few Republicans are opposed because of their devotion to Trump. In Leavitt’s black mirror, it’s the Republicans who are champions of transparency.“This administration has done more than any, and it just shows how this is truly a manufactured hoax by the Democrat party, for now they’re talking about it all of a sudden because President Trump is in the Oval Office,” she said, a note of indignation rising in her voice. “But when Joe Biden was sitting in there, the Democrats never brought this up. This wasn’t an issue that they cared about because they actually don’t care about the victims in these cases.”Leavitt then got philosophical. “There are no coincidences in Washington DC,” she said. “And it is not a coincidence that the Democrats leaked these emails to the fake news this morning ahead of Republicans reopening the government.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn her telling, it was all a “distraction campaign” by the Democrats and the liberal media so that Leavitt would be asked questions about Epstein instead of the government reopening thanks to Trump.She was asked about a CNN report that indicated that the White House would meet Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who has signed on to the petition to force the House to consider compelling the release of the Epstein files.“Doesn’t it show transparency that members of the Trump administration are willing to brief members of Congress whenever they please?” she responded. “Doesn’t that show our level of transparency?”Again, you almost had to admire the chutzpah. Then Leavitt pulled a familiar tactic that is serving her and Trump well in his second term: she switched gears and took a question from Reagan Reese, White House correspondent of the Daily Caller, a rightwing website co-founded by Tucker Carlson.Reese announced: “I have a question on the government shutdown.” Leavitt responded: “Thank you. I’m glad someone does.”The playbook had worked again. When momentum among the press pack is building dangerously, Trump or Leavitt nips it in the bud by calling on a friendly face who is sure to change the tone and lighten the mood. Instead of going after the Epstein emails like a dog with a bone on Wednesday, reporters asked about a variety of subjects, including Jack Schlossberg and which Wall Street executives were coming to dinner at the White House.What might have been a wretched, career-threatening crisis for any another political leader became just another passing storm in the room. Leavitt did not break sweat. More

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      in US Politics

      Judge orders release of hundreds arrested during Chicago immigration raids

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      A federal judge has ordered the release of hundreds of people who were arrested over the last few months in the Chicago area amid the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids across the city.On Wednesday, US district judge Jeffrey Cummings ordered the justice department to produce a list showing which of the 615 possible class members are still in custody by 19 November, the Chicago Tribune reports.According to Cummings, he would allow the members’ release on a $1,500 bond as long as they have no criminal history or prior removal order. The ACLU of Illinois said that the order will mean the immediate release of 13 people who have been detained by federal officials.As part of Wednesday’s order, Cummings also prohibited the government from pressuring detainees to agree to voluntary deportation while their cases are pending, the Chicago Tribune added.The order comes after Donald Trump’s Operation Midway Blitz launched a series of aggressive immigration raids across Chicago during which federal agents have been accused of using excessive force against protesters including deploying tear gas and pepper spray.In a statement to the Guardian, ACLU’s Illinois chapter hailed Cummings’ decision, with its deputy legal director Michelle Garcia noting the 13 immediate releases.“In addition, more than 600 additional individuals may be released in a week on bond or ankle monitoring, while the parties determine if their arrests violated the consent decree,” Garcia added, referencing a 2022 consent decree that had been previously established concerning warrantless arrests in the Chicago area.The ACLU and the National Immigrant Justice Center had filed a lawsuit over allegations that federal agents violated the 2022 agreement by issuing warrantless arrests amid the latest immigration crackdowns across the city.Garcia went on to say: “Most importantly, the court committed to enforcing our agreement with the federal government – a step that creates a pathway for even more of the hundreds of people illegally arrested and detained during Operation Midway Blitz to be released. The court is holding ICE and CBP accountable for breaking the law.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMeanwhile, justice department lawyer William Weiland described Cummings’ decision as “highly significant” and requested that he halt any release order so he could consult with his superiors, the Chicago Tribune reported. Weiland further noted that at least 12 of the 615 individuals posed a substantial security concern and that the government needed more time to complete their vetting, the outlet added.Cummings has directed both the plaintiffs and defendants to file a status report by 21 November.Just last month, a coalition of immigration advocates – led by the Illinois chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the MacArthur Justice Center – filed a lawsuit against federal authorities, alleging “torturous” conditions at an ICE facility in the Chicago area. More

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      Trump calls Epstein emails a Democratic deflection after correspondence alleges president ‘knew about the girls’ – live

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      In a post on Truth Social, the president has addressed the batch of emails released by House Democrats on the oversight committee.“The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown,” Trump wrote. “There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!”Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva was sworn in by Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, on Wednesday, ending a seven-week standoff that prevented the incoming congresswoman from taking her seat and clearing the path for a vote to release the Jeffrey Epstein files.House Democrats burst into applause on the House floor when Grijalva took the oath of office during a ceremonial swearing-in, shortly before the chamber was poised to take up legislation that would end the longest federal government shutdown in US history. The ceremony comes 49 days after Grijalva won a late September special election to succeed her father, the longtime congressman Raúl Grijalva, who died in March.Grijalva’s arrival does more than narrow the already razor-thin Republican majority. She has vowed to become the 218th and final signature on a discharge petition that would automatically trigger a House floor vote on legislation demanding the justice department release additional files on deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

      A new batch of emails released by House Democrats on the oversight committee seemed to suggest that Donald Trump was aware of Jeffrey Epstein’s conduct. In the three emails released, Epstein apparently told his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell that Trump “spent hours” at his house with one of Epstein’s victims. In two other emails to author Michael Wolff, Epstein wrote that “of course he knew about the girls”, referring to the Trump. According to the exchanges, Epstein also solicited Wolff’s advice about how he should handle Trump discussing their friendship in an interview with CNN. “I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff writes. “If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency.”

      Later, the committee’s Republican majority countered by releasing its own tranche of 23,000 documents, accusing Democrats of “cherrypicking” the memos “to generate clickbait”. The GOP members also insisted the redacted victim that the late sex-offender refers to in his emails was actually one of his most prominent accusers – Virginia Giuffre.

      At the White House today, the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that the new correspondence released today “proves absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong”. She repeated Republicans’ claims that Giuffre was the unnamed victim. “She maintained that there was nothing inappropriate she ever witnessed, that President Trump was always extremely professional and friendly to her,” Leavitt added.

      For his part, Trump labelled the move by Democrats as “deflection” for their performance during the record-breaking government shutdown. In a post on Truth Social, the president wrote: “There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!”

      The Epstein investigation is likely to receive revived interest as the House prepares to return from recess and vote on a bill to reopen the federal government, as Mike Johnson is set to swear in representative-elect Adelita Grijalva after seven weeks of waiting. The soon-to-be Democratic lawmaker is set to be the 218th signature needed on a discharge petition, a procedural tool that would force a vote on the House floor to release the full tranche of Epstein investigation records.

      While the news of the Epstein email drop dominated the day, the House is set to vote on a funding bill to finally reopen the federal government today. Republican leaders, as well as Trump, expect the bill to pass. The extension would extend government funding at current levels through January 2026, along with three year-long provisions that will fund programs at the Department of Veterans Affairs, the USDA and the FDA, and legislative branch operations. It would also reinstate all fired workers that were let go during the shutdown and guarantee back pay for those furloughed.
      At 4pm ET, we can expect the House to reconvene after more than 50 days of recess, and for the Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, to swear in representative-elect Adelita Grijalva.Johnson has staved off the ceremony for the soon-to-be Arizona Democrat for weeks while the government shutdown continued. She’s expected to be the final, and 218th, signature needed to force a vote on the House floor for the full release of the Epstein files.Earlier, CNN reported that top Trump administration officials were planning to meet today to discuss the discharge petition that would force a vote on the House floor to release the complete Epstein files.According to CNN’s source, the planned meeting would include the US attorney general, Pam Bondi; the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche; Kash Patel, the FBI director; and Lauren Boebert, a Republican Colorado congresswoman and a Trump loyalist who has signed on to the effort for the records to be released.In the White House briefing room, the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, appeared to confirm the meeting, branding it as the latest example of the administration’s commitment to “transparency”.My colleague Adam Gabbatt has put together a helpful timeline of some of the most significant developments in the Epstein saga that continues to dog the administration. Starting in 2019, when Epstein was charged with federal sex-trafficking crimes, and taking us up to the batch of Epstein’s emails released today that suggest Trump knew about the late financier’s conduct.In a post on Truth Social, the president has addressed the batch of emails released by House Democrats on the oversight committee.“The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown,” Trump wrote. “There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!”Ahead of the House preparing to vote on a Senate-passed bill to reopen the government, Democrats in the lower chamber held a press conference on the steps of the Capitol.“Republicans control the House, the Senate and the presidency,” said the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries. “They own the mess that has been created in the United States of America.”Today’s legislation includes none of the healthcare provisions that Democrats made a centerpiece of their fight with the GOP when the government shut down. After some senators in the Democratic caucus broke ranks and voted to pass the bill, much of the party slammed their decision.Today, Jeffries offered more fighting words:
      We work for the American people as we stand on the Capitol steps, ready to continue this battle on the House floor, a battle that we waged week after week after week, and that will continue regardless of the outcome … We’ll continue to fight to stand up for the Affordable Care Act and an extension of the tax credits. We’ll continue to fight for your hospitals. We’ll continue to fight for your nursing homes.
      As the House prepares to vote on a funding bill that would end the longest government shutdown on record, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) has sent a letter to lawmakers in the lower chamber urging them to pass the legislation.“Passing this bill will reopen the government and allow federal employees to return to the work of serving the American people. It will ensure safety and security for our vital transportation systems,” wrote Daniel Horowitz, legislative director of the largest union representing federal workers.The AFGE argues that Senate-passed resolution includes several provisions beneficial for civil servants affected by the shutdown. This includes ensuring back pay to furloughed workers, reinstating those terminated from their positions by wide-scale reductions in force when the government shuttered, and preventing further layoffs while the continuing resolution keeps agencies open through January.Leavitt said that she hadn’t spoken to the president about whether he believes that Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, the former prince, should sit for an interview with congressional lawmakers on the House oversight committee, after they requested his cooperation in their ongoing investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.Responding to question about the validity of the emails released by House oversight Democrats, Leavitt responded plainly. “These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong,” the press secretary said. “Jeffrey Epstein was a member at Mar-a-Lago until President Trump kicked him out because Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile and he was a creep.”Leavitt repeated Republicans’ statements identifying the redacted name in the batch of emails as Virginia Giuffre. “She maintained that there was nothing inappropriate she ever witnessed, that president Trump was always extremely professional and friendly to her,” Leavitt reiterated, of the outspoken victim of Epstein’s abuse, who died by suicide earlier this year.Leavitt is spending most of her opening remarks blaming Democrats for the longest shutdown on record, as the House prepares to vote on a bill to reopen the government.“The Democrats’ weakness and their unwillingness to buck the fringe members of their party dragged this harmful shutdown on for seven weeks and inflicted massive pain on to the American public,” she said.The White House briefing has begun, and we’ll bring you the latest from Karoline Leavitt as she’ll face questions from reporters.Dominating the news of the day: a small batch of emails released by House Democrats on the oversight committee in which the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein said that Donald Trump “spent hours” at his home in an email to Ghislaine Maxwell – the late sex offender’s accomplice.In one of the email chains in the larger tranche released by the House oversight committee, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly known as Prince Andrew) appeared to tell Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, “I can’t take any more of this,” in March 2011 after a newspaper said they would be running a story about the trio.In the email chain, Maxwell was initially forwarded the press inquiry from the Mail on Sunday from somebody named Mark Cohen, who told her: “FYI, following up on my email of this morning. Again, I have no intention of responding unless you direct otherwise.”After the email was forwarded from Maxwell to Epstein, and then from Epstein to somebody listed as “The Duke” on 4 March 2011, Andrew appears to respond: “What? I don’t know any of this. How are you responding?”Epstein responds: “Just got it two minutes ago. I’ve asked g [sic] lawyers to send a letter. Not sure … it’s so salcisous [sic] and ridiculous, im [sic] not sure how to respond, the only person she didn’t have sex with was Elvis.”Andrew then appears to reply to Epstein, saying:
      Please make sure that every statement or legal letter states clearly that I am NOT involved and that I knew and know NOTHING about any of these allegations. I can’t take any more of this my end. More

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      in US Politics

      Arizona’s Adelita Grijalva sworn in after seven weeks in move that could force Epstein vote

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      Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva was sworn in by Mike Johnson, the US House speaker, on Wednesday, ending a seven-week standoff that prevented the incoming congresswoman from taking her seat and clearing the path for a vote to release the Jeffrey Epstein files.House Democrats burst into applause on the House floor when Grijalva took the oath of office during a ceremonial swearing in, shortly before the chamber was poised to take up legislation that would end the longest federal government shutdown in US history. The ceremony comes 49 days after Grijalva won a late September special election to succeed her father, the longtime congressman Raúl Grijalva, who died in March.Grijalva’s arrival does more than narrow the already razor-thin Republican majority. She has vowed to become the 218th and final signature on a discharge petition that would automatically trigger a House floor vote on legislation demanding the justice department release additional files on deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.Already on Wednesday morning, House oversight Democrats released “never-before-seen” Epstein emails that mention Trump, including a 2011 message to Ghislaine Maxwell in which Epstein wrote that Trump “spent hours at my house” with a sex trafficking victim, calling Trump a “dog that hasn’t barked”.A 2019 email to author Michael Wolff states that “of course [Trump] knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop”.But lawmakers say many additional files remain sealed that for now leave unanswered questions about Epstein’s network and associates that a discharge petition could force the House to address.The petition, introduced by Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie and California congressman Ro Khanna in early September, needs just one more signature to force a vote under House rules. Support has come overwhelmingly from Democrats, though Republican representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace have also signed on.Democrats accused Johnson of blocking Grijalva’s swearing-in specifically to prevent the Epstein vote. Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona said that Johnson was “covering up for pedophiles.”If the Epstein files legislation clears the House, it would still need Senate approval. But the vote itself would force lawmakers into an uncomfortable choice between voters demanding transparency about Epstein’s powerful associates and an actively discouraging Donald Trump administration who has pushed to avoid a deeper investigation.Epstein, a financier with connections to numerous high-profile figures, including Trump, died in federal custody in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide.While previous document releases have detailed some of his associations, lawmakers have argued that a significant tranche of information remains sealed in justice department files.Johnson kept the House out of session following Grijalva’s victory as part of a strategy to pressure Senate Democrats to vote to reopen the government during the shutdown. The Republican speaker claimed he could not administer the oath while the chamber remained inactive, though Grijalva won a week before the shutdown began and no such House rule exists prohibiting the swearing in of newly elected members during recesses.Democrats also widely rejected Johnson’s explanation, noting in a 180-signature letter that he had sworn in two Florida Republicans earlier this year while the House was out. Arizona’s Democratic attorney general, Kris Mayes, filed a lawsuit last month seeking to force Johnson to seat Grijalva.Johnson defended his actions by claiming he followed precedent set by former speaker Nancy Pelosi, who he said delayed similar ceremonies for Republicans. He insists his decision had nothing to do with avoiding an explosive vote on Epstein-related documents, though that ignores an intense pressure campaign from Trump allies attempting to spare the president from attention due to his longtime social ties with Epstein.Speaking to CNN on Tuesday, Grijalva said she plans to directly confront Johnson about the delay, calling the avoidance “undemocratic”, “unconstitutional” and “illegal”.“This kind of obstruction cannot happen again,” she said. More

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      in US Politics

      Epstein’s emails stir new doubts over Trump’s past denials

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      Their content is cryptic and raises more questions than answers.Yet the tranche of emails on the Jeffrey Epstein affair released by Democrats in the House of Representatives show enough contradictions between their references to Donald Trump and the US president’s own previous utterances on the subject to fan a fresh wave of speculation and guesswork.An email sent by Epstein in April 2011 to Ghislaine Maxwell captures the intriguingly ambiguous tone.“I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump,” Epstein writes.Maxwell writes back: “I’ve been thinking about that.”“Victim [name redacted] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned.” The White House has since identified the victim as Virginia Giuffre.Another Epstein email in January 2019 to the writer Michael Wolff – author of several books on Trump’s presidency – is more direct, yet tantalizingly incomplete.Once again mentioning a victim’s redacted name, it makes an unexplained reference to “Mara Lago” [sic], Trump’s Florida home and club, before going on to say, “Trump says he asked me to resign, never a member ever.”That comment may refer to reports that Trump once banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago – according to some reports, for allegedly trying to seduce the teenage daughter of another member.Trump told reporters during his first presidency in July 2019 that he had banned Epstein but did not explain the reasons. “I did have a falling out a long time ago,” he said. “The reason doesn’t make any difference, frankly.”He has repeated the assertion several times while trying to dissociate himself from a man he once praised lavishly.Last summer, he said he had expelled Epstein for luring spa attendants away from Mar-a-Lago. Other accounts have suggested that the two men fell out after getting into a competitive bidding war over the same property in Palm Beach in 2004.In the email to Wolff, Epstein adds: “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.”While what Maxwell was asked to stop is unexplained, the assertion that Trump “knew about the girls” could raise doubts about the truthfulness of the president’s previous statements.Asked in the same 2019 encounter with journalists if he had “any suspicions that [Epstein] was molesting … underaged women”, Trump responded: “No, I had no idea. I had no idea. I haven’t spoken to him in many, many years.”That comment – while Epstein was in federal custody awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges – sits uneasily with what Trump told New York magazine in 2002.“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” he said. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it – Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”An email exchange released Wednesday between Epstein and Wolff in December 2015 – when Trump was running for the Republicans’ presidential nomination – alludes to damage that the pair’s past ties could cause Trump.“I think you should let him hang himself,” writes Wolff. “If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or in the house, then that gives you a valuable PR or political currency.“You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt.“Of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.”Since Epstein’s death and as revelations of his underage sex trafficking have proliferated, Trump has, on the contrary, tried to wash his hands of his once close friend – while emphasizing Epstein’s close ties to Bill Clinton.“I know [Clinton] was on his plane 27 times, and he said he was on the plane four times … And then the question you have to ask is: Did Bill Clinton go to the island?, Trump said in 2019 referring to an island owned by Epstein.“Because Epstein had an island that was not a good place, as I understand it. And I was never there. So you have to ask: Did Bill Clinton go to the island? If you find that out, you’re going to know a lot.”According to Rolling Stone, an unsealed document disclosed that Clinton and Trump flew on Epstein’s plane.Trump in recent years has gone out his way to express disdain for Epstein.“I was not a fan of Jeffrey Epstein … I threw him out of a club. I didn’t want anything to do with him. That was many, many years ago. It shows you one thing: that I have good taste. OK? Now, other people, they went all over with him. They went to his island. They went all over the place.”He has also indulged conspiracy theories circulating among his Maga supporters that Epstein’s death in a Manhattan prison cell may not have been suicide.Asked by the rightwing broadcaster Tucker Carlson in 2023 if Epstein may have been murdered, he said: “I don’t know … it’s possible. I mean, I don’t really believe – I think he probably committed suicide.“But there are those people, there are many people – I think you’re one of them, right? But a lot of people think that he was killed.”Amid the clamor to release the files, Trump was ambiguous – fanning unease that the latest email releases is unlikely to quell.Asked by Fox News during the 2024 presidential election campaign if he would release the Epstein files – along with the John F Kennedy and the September 11 attack files – he equivocated.“I guess I would. I think that less so because you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world,” he said. “I don’t know about Epstein so much as I do the others.”With segments of his base angered by the reneging on that vague promise, he has hit out at journalists and his opponents.“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years,” he told a reporter who asked Pam Bondi, the attorney general, about the files at a cabinet meeting in July.“I can’t believe you’re asking a question on Epstein at a time like this, where we’re having some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened in Texas [where deadly floods had happened.] It just seems like a desecration.”He has also called the files a hoax and a creation of his political opponents, including Barack Obama.“They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called ‘friends’ are playing right into their hands,” he posted on his Truth Social platform. “Why didn’t these Radical Left Lunatics release the Epstein Files? If there was ANYTHING in there that could have hurt the MAGA Movement, why didn’t they use it?” More

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      Trump knew about Epstein’s conduct, newly released emails suggest

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      Damning new emails that suggest Donald Trump knew about the conduct of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were released Wednesday, including one in which Epstein said “of course [Trump] knew about the girls” procured for his sex-trafficking ring, and another that said Trump “spent hours” with one victim at Epstein’s house.The release of the three messages by Democrats on the House oversight committee is likely to heap significant pressure on the White House to publish in full the so-called Epstein files reportedly detailing the long-running scandal that has overshadowed Trump’s second term in office.Later on Wednesday, the committee’s Republican majority countered by releasing its own tranche of 23,000 documents, accusing Democrats of “cherry picking” the memos “to generate clickbait”.Trump, meanwhile, fired off a post to his Truth Social platform in which he said Democrats “are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they’ll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they’ve done on the Shutdown, and so many other subjects”.The president urged House members to focus instead on the upcoming vote to reopen the government: “There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!”Numerous victims have said they were assaulted at Epstein’s infamous parties that took place at his home in New York, his Florida mansion and at his compound at Little St James in the US Virgin Islands, to which “clients” would be ferried by private jet.In one of the memos released Wednesday, Epstein alleged to his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell in April 2011 that Trump had had a lengthy engagement in the company of one of the disgraced financier’s sex-trafficked victims.“I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. [victim’s name redacted] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned,” the message reads.In her reply, Maxwell says: “I have been thinking about that.”A second message, sent by Epstein to Trump biographer Michael Wolff in January 2019, indicates that Trump had asked him to resign from Mar-a-Lago, the president’s exclusive members-only club in Florida.But, Epstein says, he was “never a member ever” and adds “of course he knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop”.Epstein’s longtime friend and co-conspirator Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence after her conviction for sex-trafficking crimes, including procuring girls to be abused.A third message, sent by Epstein to Wolff in December 2015, solicited the author’s advice about fashioning a response for Trump to questions CNN was reportedly preparing to ask him about their relationship.“If we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?” Epstein asks.“I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff responds.“If he says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you …“Of course, it is possible that, when asked, he’ll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.”Trump has consistently denied having knowledge of Epstein’s activities, which included the operation of a sex-trafficking ring that procured teen girls for wealthy and influential associates. Epstein killed himself in 2019 while in federal custody.Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, in a lunchtime press briefing at the White House, called the release of the emails “a manufactured hoax by the Democratic party” to distract from the reopening of the government.She also expanded on an earlier statement in which she identified the unnamed victim in the redacted email as Virginia Giuffre, who named Epstein, Maxwell and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince, among her abusers, but never publicly accused Trump.In her posthumous memoir, Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, Giuffre said she was recruited by Maxwell from Mar-a-Lago, where she worked as a teenager. She died by suicide in April aged 41.“Ms Giuffre, and God rest her soul, maintained that there was nothing inappropriate she ever witnessed, that President Trump was always extremely professional and friendly to her,” Leavitt said.“It’s a question worth asking the Democratic party why they chose to redact that name of a victim who has already publicly made statements about her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and is, unfortunately, no longer with us.”Leavitt insisted that “these emails proved absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong”.Democrats, however, have accused the White House of covering up Trump’s alleged involvement and have consistently called on Pam Bondi, Trump’s attorney general, to release documents about the scandal, which have come to be known as the Epstein files.In a statement, the oversight committee’s ranking member, Robert Garcia, said: “The more Donald Trump tries to cover up the Epstein files, the more we uncover. These latest emails and correspondence raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the president.”Other Democrats joined calls for more transparency from the White House.Ro Khanna, a California Democratic representative, said that this was “exactly why” he was working with the Republican representative Thomas Massie to force a House floor vote on the full release of the Epstein files.“The public deserves transparency and the survivors deserve justice,” he said.In a post to X, Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota senator, wrote: “Americans deserve the full truth. The administration needs to keep its promise and release the Epstein files.”A vote could come quickly as the House prepares to reconvene Wednesday after the lengthy government shutdown.The Republican speaker, Mike Johnson, who has wavered on the release of the full tranche of Epstein investigation records, has said he will swear in Arizona’s newly elected representative Adelita Grijalva, set to be the 218th signature needed on a discharge petition that would force a vote.“Republicans are running a pedophile protection program. They are intentionally hiding the Jeffrey Epstein files,” Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, said on Tuesday, accusing Johnson of delaying Grijalva’s swearing-in for seven weeks to defend Trump.Maxwell, meanwhile, is seeking a commutation of her sentence from Trump, according to Democrats on the House judiciary committee.The supreme court last month rejected Maxwell’s appeal to overturn her criminal conviction.Additional reporting by Shrai Popat More