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      Rubio moves to strip US visas from eight Brazilian judges in Bolsonaro battle

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      The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has reportedly stripped eight of Brazil’s 11 supreme court judges of their US visas as the White House escalates its campaign to help the country’s former president Jair Bolsonaro avoid justice over his alleged attempt to seize power with a military coup.Bolsonaro, a far-right populist with ties to Donald Trump’s Maga movement, is on trial for allegedly masterminding a murderous plot to cling to power after losing the 2022 election to his leftwing rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro is expected to be convicted by the supreme court in the coming weeks and faces a jail sentence of up to 43 years.As the day of judgment nears, Trump has been increasing pressure on the court and President Lula’s administration. On 9 July, the US president announced he would impose 50% tariffs on all Brazilian imports as of 1 August, partly as a result of the supposed persecution of his ally. The move triggered an outpouring of nationalist anger in the South American country, with Lula describing it as “unacceptable blackmail”.On Friday, after federal police raided Bolsonaro’s house and fitted him with an electronic tag to stop him absconding, Rubio announced further moves in support of the defendant, who he claimed was the victim of a “political witch hunt”.Writing on X, Rubio said he had ordered visa revocations for the judge leading the investigation into Bolsonaro, Alexandre de Moraes, as well as “his allies on the court” and their family members. Rubio did not name his other targets but the Brazilian newspaper O Globo identified them as Luís Roberto Barroso, José Antonio Dias Toffoli, Cristiano Zanin, Flávio Dino, Cármen Lúcia Antunes Rocha, Luiz Edson Fachin and Gilmar Ferreira Mendes.Two other judges who were nominated to the court during Bolsonaro’s 2019-23 presidency, André Mendonça and Kassio Nunes Marques, reportedly avoided the sanction, as did a third judge, Luiz Fux.Lula denounced what he called “another arbitrary and completely groundless measure from the US government”.“Interference in another country’s justice system is unacceptable and offends the basic principles of national sovereignty and respect between nations,” the president said on Saturday, adding: “I’m certain that no kind of intimidation or threat – from whoever it may be – will compromise the most important mission of our nation’s powers and institutions, which is to act permanently to defend and safeguard the democratic rule of law.”The Trump strategist Alex Bruesewitz welcomed Rubio’s announcement, calling Bolsonaro’s treatment “sick and wrong”.Bolsonaro’s congressman son, Eduardo, thanked Rubio for his decision. “Thank you very much for this fight in favor of free speech, we do believe in the same values,” tweeted Eduardo, who has been living in the US since February and has reportedly been lobbying officials there over his father’s plight.Trump’s interventions have appalled millions of Brazilians who hope to see their former leader held responsible for the alleged coup attempt, which culminated in the 8 January riots in Brasília.Lula’s institutional relations minister, Gleisi Hoffmann, called the visa cancellations “an aggressive and petty retaliation” and “an affront to the Brazilian judiciary and national sovereignty”.Even influential rightwing voices have criticised the US’s attempt to meddle in one of the world’s most populous democracies by imposing 50% tariffs.On Saturday, the conservative Estado de São Paulo newspaper described Trump’s behaviour as “unacceptable external interference in Brazil’s domestic matters”. “Trump has not only attacked our national sovereignty … [but also] stained the history of diplomatic relations between the two largest democracies in the Americas,” the newspaper’s editorial board wrote.While the Bolsonaros have hailed Trump’s actions, they also appear to have grasped how the announcement of tariffs has backfired, allowing Lula to pose as a nationalist defender of Brazilian interests and paint the Bolsonaro clan as self-serving “traitors”.Lula, who had been facing growing public disillusionment and an uphill battle to win re-election next year, has enjoyed a bounce in the polls since Trump launched his trade war, the brunt of which will be borne by coffee producers and cattle ranchers in Bolsonaro-voting regions, such as São Paulo.Celso Rocha de Barros, a political columnist, said he suspected the Bolsonaros had been blindsided by the scale of Trump’s attack.“I think [Bolsonaro] wanted some kind of penalty – something he could use to say: ‘Look, Brazil’s being punished because of Bolsonaro’s persecution. But [the tariffs] went far too far … [they] screwed Bolsonaro’s base,” said Rocha de Barros, pointing to their potential impact on agribusiness.On Friday night, Bolsonaro’s senator son, Flávio, post on X, calling on Trump to suspend the tariffs and replace them with individual sanctions. Soon after, however, he deleted the post. More

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      Trump administration orders release of Epstein court documents amid mounting pressure – US politics live

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      The US Department of Justice asked a federal court on Friday to unseal grand jury transcripts in Jeffrey Epstein’s case at the direction of Donald Trump amid a firestorm over the administration’s handling of records related to the wealthy financier.The move – coming a day after a Wall Street Journal story put a spotlight on Trump’s relationship with Epstein – seeks to contain a growing controversy that has engulfed the administration since it announced that it would not be releasing more government files from Epstein’s sex trafficking case.Todd Blanche, the US deputy attorney general, filed motions urging the court to unseal the Epstein transcripts as well as those in the case against British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. Epstein killed himself in 2019 shortly after his arrest while awaiting trial.The justice department’s announcement that it would not be making public any more Epstein files enraged parts of Trump’s base in part because members of his own administration had hyped the expected release and stoked conspiracies around the well-connected financier.Trump’s demand to release the grand jury transcripts came after the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday on a sexually suggestive letter that the newspaper says bore Trump’s name and was included in a 2003 album for Epstein’s 50th birthday.The letter bearing Trump’s name includes text framed by the outline of what appears to be a hand-drawn naked woman and ends with, “Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret,” according to the newspaper. The outlet described the contents of the letter but did not publish a photo showing it entirely.Trump denied writing the letter, calling it “false, malicious, and defamatory” and promised to sue. Trump said he spoke to both to the paper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, and its top editor, Emma Tucker, and told them the letter was “fake”.In other developments:

      Attorney general Pam Bondi called the case “a matter of public concern” in a formal request asking a federal judge to unseal grand jury transcripts from the 2019 investigation into Epstein, the late sex offender and longtime associate of Donald Trump.

      Dick Durbin, the senior Democrat on the senate judiciary committee wrote to Bondi to ask about the work of the 1,000 FBI personnel who reviewed approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records in March. “My office was told that these personnel were instructed to ‘flag’ any records in which President Trump was mentioned”, Durbin wrote. “What happened to the records mentioning President Trump once they were flagged?” he asked.

      Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has called for Barack Obama and former senior US national security officials to be prosecuted after accusing them of a “treasonous conspiracy” intended to show that Trump’s 2016 presidential election win was due to Russian interference.

      The Trump administration has decided to destroy $9.7m worth of contraceptives rather than send them abroad to women in need. A state department spokesperson confirmed that the decision had been made – a move that will cost US taxpayers $167,000.

      Marco Rubio, the secretary of state barred Brazilian supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes from the United States in retaliation for the prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil who has been charged for his role in allegedly leading an attempted coup following his loss in the 2022 election.

      Democrats are condemning CBS for its decision to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, noting the news comes a few days after its host criticized the network’s parent company, Paramount, for settling a $16m lawsuit with Donald Trump. Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who appeared as a guest on Colbert’s show on Thursday night, later wrote on social media: “If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better.”
      As Donald Trump tries to claim he was “not a fan” of Jeffrey Epstein, photos, videos and anecdotes paint a picture of their relationship, writes Adam Gabbatt:Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has called for Barack Obama and former senior US national security officials to be prosecuted after accusing them of a “treasonous conspiracy” intended to show that Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election win was due to Russian interference.She said Obama and senior officials in his administration had “[laid] the groundwork for … a years-long coup” against Trump after his victory over Hillary Clinton by “manufacturing intelligence” to suggest that Russia had tried to influence the election. That included using a dossier prepared by a British intelligence analyst, Christopher Steele, that they knew to be unreliable, Gabbard claimed.The post-election intelligence estimates contrasted with findings reached before the election, which indicated that Russia probably was not trying to interfere.In extraordinary comments calling for prosecutions, she added:
      The information we are releasing today clearly shows there was a treasonous conspiracy in 2016 committed by officials at the highest level of our government.
      Their goal was to subvert the will of the American people and enact what was essentially a years-long coup with the objective of trying to usurp the President from fulfilling the mandate bestowed upon him by the American people.
      No matter how powerful, every person involved in this conspiracy must be investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, to ensure nothing like this ever happens again. The American people’s faith and trust in our democratic republic and therefore the future of our nation depends on it.
      Indigenous leaders have warn higher education institutions will close if the funding-slashing 2026 budget proposal passes, Meliss Hellmann reports:The former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison will testify at a US House panel hearing next week about countering China’s “economic coercion against democracies,” the committee said on Friday.Rahm Emanuel, the former US ambassador to Japan, will also testify before the House select committee on China.Relations with China, already rocky after Australia banned Huawei from its 5G broadband network in 2018, cooled further in 2020 after the Morrison government called for an independent investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 virus.China responded by imposing tariffs on Australian commodities, including wine and barley and limited imports of Australian beef, coal and grapes, moves described by the United States as “economic coercion”.Morrison was defeated in a bid for reelection in 2022. His successor, Anthony Albanese, visited China this week, underscoring a warming of ties.Away from the main story on the blog today, Japan’s top tariff negotiator, Ryosei Akazawa, said on Saturday he planned to visit Washington next week to hold further ministerial-level talks with the United States.Tokyo hopes to clinch a deal by a 1 August deadline that will avert President Donald Trump’s tariff of 25% on imports from Japan.“I intend to keep on seeking actively an agreement that is beneficial to both Japan and the United States, while safeguarding our national interest,” Akazawa told reporters in the western region of Osaka, according to Reuters.Akazawa was visiting Osaka to host a US delegation, led by treasury secretary Scott Bessent, that participated in the US national aay event at World Expo 2025. Akazawa said he did not discuss tariffs with Bessent.Here is the Guardian’s story on Donald Trump’s plans to sue the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch over its Jeffrey Epstein report:Donald Trump has sued Rupert Murdoch and two Wall Street Journal newspaper reporters for libel and slander over claims that he sent the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein a lewd letter and sketch of a naked woman.Trump’s lawsuit on Friday, which also targets Dow Jones and News Corp, was filed in the southern district of Florida federal court in Miami.The lawsuit seeks at least $10bn in damages.It came after the Journal reported on a 50th birthday greeting that Trump allegedly sent to Epstein in 2003 that included a sexually suggestive drawing and reference to secrets they shared.It was reportedly a contribution to a birthday album compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence in Florida after being found guilty of sex-trafficking and other charges in 2021.“A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist, mimicking pubic hair,” the Journal reported of the alleged drawing. The letter allegedly concluded: “Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.”Trump vehemently denied the Journal report and claimed the letter was fake. He said on Truth Social that he warned Murdoch, the founder of News Corp, the newspaper’s parent company, that he planned to sue.Donald Trump has sued Rupert Murdoch and two Wall Street Journal newspaper reporters for libel and slander over claims that he sent the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein a lewd letter and sketch of a naked woman.In the filing, Trump calls the Wall Street Journal’s report “false and defamatory” and demands at least $10bn in damages and court costs from Rupert Murdoch, two Wall Street Journal reporters, News Corporation chief executive Robert Thomson and related corporate entities.Read the court documents in full at the below link:A lawsuit. Angry calls to editors. Public denunciations. In the wake of the Wall Street Journal’s story claiming Donald Trump contributed to a “bawdy” letter to the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein – featuring a drawing of a naked woman’s silhouette around a typewritten personal message – the president’s relationship with the outlet’s proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, appears on the surface to have deteriorated from temperamental to terminal.Just a few days ago, the 94-year-old mogul was spotted among the president’s high-profile guests at the Fifa Club World Cup final. Following the publication of the article, however, Murdoch now finds himself on the president’s lengthy list of media opponents threatened with court action.In an unprecedented environment in which a sitting president regularly takes direct aim at the media, there have been numerous claims of big outlets making decisions that make life easier for their billionaire owners. Yet the Journal published the Epstein allegations even after Trump picked up the phone to its British editor, Emma Tucker, to demand that she ditch the story. Trump also claims Murdoch himself was approached to stop the article, to no avail.According to some media watchers, it is the latest sign that Murdoch is taking a different approach to Trump’s return than some of his fellow billionaire moguls. Even before the Epstein story dropped on Thursday, Murdoch’s Journal continued to criticise Trump from the right over some of his early decisions.The justice department said in the court filings that it will work with prosecutors in New York to make appropriate redactions of victim-related information and other personally identifying information before transcripts are released.“Transparency in this process will not be at the expense of our obligation under the law to protect victims,” Todd Blanche, the US deputy attorney general wrote.But despite the new push to release the grand jury transcripts, the administration has not announced plans to reverse course and release other evidence in its possession. Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, had hyped the release of more materials after the first Epstein files disclosure in February sparked outrage because it contained no new revelations.A judge would have to approve the release of the grand jury transcripts, and it’s likely to be a lengthy process to decide what can become public and to make redactions to protect sensitive witness and victim information.The records would show testimony of witnesses and other evidence that was presented by prosecutions during the secret grand jury proceedings, when a panel decides whether there is enough evidence to bring an indictment, or a formal criminal charge.The US Department of Justice asked a federal court on Friday to unseal grand jury transcripts in Jeffrey Epstein’s case at the direction of Donald Trump amid a firestorm over the administration’s handling of records related to the wealthy financier.The move – coming a day after a Wall Street Journal story put a spotlight on Trump’s relationship with Epstein – seeks to contain a growing controversy that has engulfed the administration since it announced that it would not be releasing more government files from Epstein’s sex trafficking case.Todd Blanche, the US deputy attorney general, filed motions urging the court to unseal the Epstein transcripts as well as those in the case against British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. Epstein killed himself in 2019 shortly after his arrest while awaiting trial.The justice department’s announcement that it would not be making public any more Epstein files enraged parts of Trump’s base in part because members of his own administration had hyped the expected release and stoked conspiracies around the well-connected financier.Trump’s demand to release the grand jury transcripts came after the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday on a sexually suggestive letter that the newspaper says bore Trump’s name and was included in a 2003 album for Epstein’s 50th birthday.The letter bearing Trump’s name includes text framed by the outline of what appears to be a hand-drawn naked woman and ends with, “Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret,” according to the newspaper. The outlet described the contents of the letter but did not publish a photo showing it entirely.Trump denied writing the letter, calling it “false, malicious, and defamatory” and promised to sue. Trump said he spoke to both to the paper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, and its top editor, Emma Tucker, and told them the letter was “fake”.In other developments:

      Attorney general Pam Bondi called the case “a matter of public concern” in a formal request asking a federal judge to unseal grand jury transcripts from the 2019 investigation into Epstein, the late sex offender and longtime associate of Donald Trump.

      Dick Durbin, the senior Democrat on the senate judiciary committee wrote to Bondi to ask about the work of the 1,000 FBI personnel who reviewed approximately 100,000 Epstein-related records in March. “My office was told that these personnel were instructed to ‘flag’ any records in which President Trump was mentioned”, Durbin wrote. “What happened to the records mentioning President Trump once they were flagged?” he asked.

      Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has called for Barack Obama and former senior US national security officials to be prosecuted after accusing them of a “treasonous conspiracy” intended to show that Trump’s 2016 presidential election win was due to Russian interference.

      The Trump administration has decided to destroy $9.7m worth of contraceptives rather than send them abroad to women in need. A state department spokesperson confirmed that the decision had been made – a move that will cost US taxpayers $167,000.

      Marco Rubio, the secretary of state barred Brazilian supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes from the United States in retaliation for the prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro, the former president of Brazil who has been charged for his role in allegedly leading an attempted coup following his loss in the 2022 election.

      Democrats are condemning CBS for its decision to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, noting the news comes a few days after its host criticized the network’s parent company, Paramount, for settling a $16m lawsuit with Donald Trump. Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who appeared as a guest on Colbert’s show on Thursday night, later wrote on social media: “If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better.” More

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      Trump administration to destroy nearly $10m of contraceptives for women overseas

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      The Trump administration has decided to destroy $9.7m worth of contraceptives rather than send them abroad to women in need.A state department spokesperson confirmed that the decision had been made – a move that will cost US taxpayers $167,000. The contraceptives are primarily long-acting, such as IUDs and birth control implants, and were almost certainly intended for women in Africa, according to two senior congressional aides, one of whom visited a warehouse in Belgium that housed the contraceptives. It is not clear to the aides whether the destruction has already been carried out, but said they had been told that it was set to occur by the end of July.“It is unacceptable that the State Department would move forward with the destruction of more than $9m in taxpayer-funded family planning commodities purchased to support women in crisis settings, including war zones and refugee camps,” Jeanne Shaheen, a Democratic senator from New Hampshire, said in a statement. Shaheen and Brian Schatz, a Democratic senator from Hawaii, have introduced legislation to stop the destruction.“This is a waste of US taxpayer dollars and an abdication of US global leadership in preventing unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions and maternal deaths,” added Shaheen, who in June sent a letter to the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, about the matter.The department decided to destroy the contraceptives because it could not sell them to any “eligible buyers”, in part because of US laws and rules that prohibit sending US aid to organizations that provide abortion services, counsel people about the procedure or advocate for the right to it overseas, according to the state department spokesperson.Most of the contraceptives have less than 70% of their shelf life left before they expire, the spokesperson said, and rebranding and selling the contraceptives could cost several million dollars. However, the aide who visited the warehouse said that the earliest expiration date they saw on the contraceptives was 2027, and that two-thirds of the contraceptives did not have any USAID labels that would need to be rebranded.The eradication of the contraceptives is part of the Trump administration’s months-long demolition of the Agency for International Development (USAID), the largest funding agency for humanitarian and development aid in the world. After the unofficial “department of government efficiency” (Doge) erased 83% of USAID’s programs, Rubio announced in June that USAID’s entire international workforce would be abolished and its foreign assistance programs would be moved to the state department. The agency will be replaced by an organization called America First.In total, the funding cuts to USAID could lead to more than 14m additional deaths by 2030, according to a recent study published in the journal the Lancet. A third of those deaths could be children.“If you have an unintended pregnancy and you end up having to seek unsafe abortion, it’s quite likely that you will die,” said Sarah Shaw, the associate director of advocacy at MSI Reproductive Choices, a global family planning organization that works in nearly 40 countries. “If you’re not given the means to space or limit your births, you’re putting your life at risk or your child’s life at risk.”MSI tried to purchase the contraceptives from the US government, Shaw said. But the government would only accept full price – which Shaw said the agency could not afford, given that MSI would also have to shoulder the expense of transportingthe contraceptives and the fact that they are inching closer to their expiration date, which could affect MSI’s ability to distribute them.The state department spokesperson did not specifically respond to a request for comment on Shaw’s allegation, but MSI does provide abortions as part of its global work, which may have led the department to rule it out as an “eligible buyer”.In an internal survey, MSI programs in 10 countries reported that, within the next month, they expect to be out of stock or be on the brink of being out of stock of at least one contraceptive method. The countries include Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Senegal, Kenya and Sierra Leone.Shaw expects the stock to be incinerated. “The fact that the contraceptives are going to be burned when there’s so much need – it’s just egregious,” she said. “It’s disgusting.” The Department of State spokesperson did not respond to a request for information on the planned method of destruction.The destruction of the contraceptives is, to Shaw, emblematic of the overall destruction of a system that once provided worldwide help to women and families. USAID funding is threaded through so much of the global supply chain of family planning aid that, without its money, the chain has come apart. In Mali, Shaw said, USAID helped pay for the gas used by the vehicles that transport contraceptives from a warehouse. Without the gas money, the vehicles were stuck – and so were the contraceptives.“I’ve worked in this sector for over 20 years and I’ve never seen anything on this scale,” Shaw said. “The speed at which they’ve managed to dismantle excellent work and really great progress – I mean, it’s just vanished in weeks.”Other kinds of assistance are also reportedly being wasted. This week, the Atlantic reported that almost 500 metric tons of emergency food were expiring and would be incinerated, rather than being used to feed about 1.5 million children in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Meanwhile, almost 800,000 Mpox vaccines that were supposed to be sent to Africa are now unusable because they are too close to their expiration date, according to Politico.The cuts to foreign aid are slated to deepen. Early on Friday morning, Congress passed a bill to claw back roughly $8bn that had been earmarked for foreign assistance.“It’s not just about an empty shelf,” Shaw said. “It’s about unfulfilled potential. It’s about a girl having to drop out of school. It’s about someone having to seek an unsafe abortion and risking their lives. That’s what it’s really about.” More

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      Trump requests release of Epstein grand jury transcripts amid report of ‘bawdy’ birthday note

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      Donald Trump said on Thursday he had directed his attorney general, Pam Bondi, to seek the release of grand jury testimony related to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking case as he sought to tamp down controversy over a story that he allegedly contributed a sketch of a naked woman to Epstein’s 50th birthday album.The president said on Truth Social he had authorized the justice department to seek the public release of the materials, which are under seal, citing “the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein”.Bondi, who has weathered days of accusations by Trump’s far-right supporters that she had mismanaged and failed to deliver on promises to release previously secret documents about the Epstein case, responded to Trump’s post with a post of her own that vowed to comply with the directive.The flurry of activity followed a story in the Wall Street Journal that reported Trump had contributed a letter, described as “bawdy” and featuring a drawing of a naked woman’s silhouette around a typewritten personal message to Epstein, to the birthday album compiled by Ghislane Maxwell.“A pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts, and the future president’s signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist, mimicking pubic hair,” the Journal said of the alleged drawing. It added the letter concluded: “Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.”Trump denied to the Journal that he was the author of the birthday tribute and, hours after the story was published, announced he intended to file a lawsuit in a lengthy post on Truth Social, decrying the reporting as fake and condemning it as what he called “the Epstein Hoax”.The president said in the post that he had personally told Rupert Murdoch and the Journal’s editor-in-chief Emma Tucker that the letter was fake and that he would sue if a story about the letter was published.“Mr Murdoch stated that he would take care of it but obviously did not have the power to do so,” Trump wrote. “Instead they are going with a false, malicious, defamatory story anyway. President Trump will be suing the Wall Street Journal, News Corp and Mr Murdoch shortly.”The statement from Trump followed attempts by the president and White House officials to try to undercut the story, including by pressing the Journal to furnish a copy of the letter, which it did not provide, according to people familiar with the matter.View image in fullscreenAs the existence of the story became increasingly known in Washington, whether the story would run and whether Trump would actually draw a figure of a woman became something of a parlor game between administration officials and Trump allies and reporters alike.The outlet conceded it was not clear how the letter with Trump’s signature was prepared, but said it contained a typewritten note said to be styled as an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein.The note reportedly began: “Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything,” the note began.Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.Donald: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.The Journal reported that Maxwell collected letters from Trump and dozens of Epstein’s other associates, including L Brands owner Les Wexner, for the 2003 birthday album, three years before Epstein was ever investigated for sexual misconduct.The Journal also reported that the leather-bound album was among the documents examined by officials with the justice department who investigated Epstein and Maxwell at that time.Among others who appear to have submitted birthday greetings to the compilation was Epstein attorney Alan Dershowitz and Wexner, who allegedly contributed a message “I wanted to get you what you want … so here it is … ” along with a line drawing that the Journal said was “of what appeared to be a woman’s breasts”. Wexner declined to comment through a spokesman.Dershowitz told the Journal: “It’s been a long time and I don’t recall the content of what I may have written.”The 2003 birthday album with Trump’s birthday wishes comes a year before Trump offered his commendation of Epstein in a 2002 New York magazine profile. “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told the publication. “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.”But in recent days, as the Epstein controversy had heated up after years of laying dormant, Trump has sought to steer Maga Republicans away from the subject, calling it a “hoax”.JD Vance sprang to Trump’s defense on Thursday night.“Forgive my language but this story is complete and utter bullshit. The WSJ should be ashamed for publishing it,” Vance wrote on X. “Where is this letter? Would you be shocked to learn they never showed it to us before publishing it? Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump?” More

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      Newsom threatens to redraw California House maps in protest at Texas plan

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      Seeking to offset a Republican plan to pick up congressional seats in Texas, California Democrats say they are prepared to redraw the state’s 52 congressional districts in a longshot and controversial effort to pick up Democratic seats.Governor Gavin Newsom, seen as a likely presidential candidate in 2028, has been leading the threat in recent days. And Democratic members of California’s delegation in the US House appear to be on board.“We want our gavels back,” Representative Mark Takano, a California Democrat, told Punchbowl News. “That’s what this is about.” Democrats hold 43 of California’s 52 seats and reportedly believe they can pick up an additional five to seven seats by drawing new maps.Newsom is pushing the plan as Texas Republicans are poised to redraw its 38 congressional districts in a special session that begins next week. Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, put redistricting on the agenda at the request of Donald Trump, who wants Republicans to add five seats in Texas as he seeks to stave off a loss in congressional seats next year. The effort has been widely criticized by Democrats as an anti-democratic ploy to make Republicans unaccountable to their voters.Newsom’s plan in California is unlikely to succeed. More than a decade ago, California voters approved a constitutional amendment that stripped lawmakers of their ability to draw congressional districts and gave it to an independent redistricting commission. Newsom has only offered vague ideas for how to get around that requirement. He has suggested the legislature could call a quick voter referendum to potentially strip the commission of its power. He also said on Wednesday there was a possibility of the legislature trying to enact new maps on its own – a novel legal theory.“It’s not lawful in any way,” said Dan Vicuña, a redistricting expert at the watchdog group Common Cause. “It was clear that this was meant to be done one time after the census, through a public and transparent process that centers community feedback, and then to be not touched again until the next decade.”He added: “It’s not an invitation to them to circumvent the independent process and gerrymander maps in the middle of a decade. That would completely undermine the purpose of the independent process voters approved.”California’s independent commission has long been considered a model for making the process of drawing district lines fairer. There has been a bipartisan push in recent years to get more states to adopt commissions such as California’s, where ordinary citizens – Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated – have the power to draw district lines. After the 2020 census, four states – California, Arizona, Michigan and Colorado – used independent commissions. Democrats sought to require all states to use independent redistricting commissions in federal legislation that stalled in the US Senate during Joe Biden’s presidency.Russell Yee, a Republican who served on California’s commission, said that while he understood Newsom’s frustration, the only solution is redistricting reform at the federal level.“To abandon a commitment to fair and equitable election districts for partisan advantage is to sell family treasures at a pawn shop for a wad of quickly spent cash,” he said.Newsom has noted he supported creating the commission, but frames his willingness to redraw maps as the type of hardball Democrats should be more willing to play as Trump and Republicans have openly defied the law.“They’re playing by a different set of rules. They can’t win by the traditional game so they want to change the game,” Newsom said on Wednesday. “We can act holier than thou. We can sit on the sidelines, talk about the way the world should be. Or we can recognize the existential nature that is this moment.”Alex Lee, a state assemblyman who chairs his chamber’s progressive caucus, rejected that argument. “CA independent citizen redistricting (imperfect) is model for the nation,” he wrote in a post on X. “[Republicans] resort to cheating to win. We win by running clear platform for the working class and delivering.”Trying to push through a redrawing of California’s map could also undermine efforts by Democrats to convince voters of the grave dangers of Trump’s attacks on the rule of law. More

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      Tensions over Epstein files hamper Republican plan to vote on cuts bill

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      Tensions over the release of documents related to disgrace financier Jeffrey Epstein have complicated House Republicans’ plans to hold a vote Thursday on legislation demanded by Donald Trump to cancel $9bn in government spending.The House of Representatives faces a Friday deadline to pass the rescissions package demanded by Trump and approved by the Senate in the wee hours of Thursday morning, otherwise the administration will be obligated to spend about $8bn meant for foreign assistance programs, and $1.1bn budgeted for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS.But before the House can vote on the package, it must be approved by the rules committee, where the Democratic minority has sought to capitalize on a growing furor among Republicans and their supporters over the Trump administration’s handling of documents related to the Epstein case by forcing the majority to take politically tricky votes.After several hours of delay, the committee announced it would hold a hearing into the package on Thursday evening, setting the stage for House Republicans to pass the legislation later in the night.Ranking member Jim McGovern accuse the GOP of “stalling” the rules committee hearing, and said Democrats would propose an amendment to the rescissions package meant to win release of any files related to Epstein.“They’re afraid to meet again to have another vote. Well, we’re going to keep the heat on and you need to keep the pressure on members of Congress,” McGovern said. “Release the files, full transparency.”On Monday, rules committee Democrats made two attempts to add language to a cryptocurrency bill that would have required the release of documents dealing with the financier, who was accused of running a sex-trafficking ring catering to global elites. Republicans voted both down.The Epstein case has grown into a crisis for Trump and the GOP ever since the justice department announced last week that, after a review of US government files, it had determined the financier’s 2019 death in federal custody was a suicide, and that no list of his clients existed to be made public.Trump’s Maga coalition includes believers in a conspiracy theory that the “deep state” is covering up a global pedophile ring in which Epstein was a major figure, and that files exist to prove it. The president has strenuously denied that his administration is hiding anything, and insulted those who call for the documents’ release as “weaklings” who fell for a “radical left” hoax intended to discredit him.Democrats, relegated to the minority in both chamber of Congress, have seized on that tension with an array of legislative maneuvers intended to make public any Epstein-related documents. On Tuesday, House speaker Mike Johnson told a conservative podcaster who asked about the case: “It’s a very delicate subject, but we should put everything out there and let the people decide it.”Meanwhile, Thomas Massie, an iconoclastic Republican congressman who has repeatedly clashed with Trump, and Democratic congressman Ro Khanna are trying to get a majority of the House to sign on to a petition that will force a vote on releasing the files, and has already received signatures from nine GOP lawmakers.The rescissions passage passed the House in June, but the chamber must vote on it again after the Senate declined to cut funding for Pepfar, a program credited with saving millions of people from infection or death from HIV that was created in 2003 under the Republican president George W Bush. More

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      Tens of thousands in US set to join ‘Good Trouble’ anti-Trump protests honoring John Lewis

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      Tens of thousands of people are joining marches and rallies at more than 1,500 sites across all 50 US states on Thursday to protest against the Trump administration and honor the legacy of the late congressman John Lewis, an advocate for voting rights and civil disobedience.The “Good Trouble Lives On” day of action coincides with the fifth anniversary of Lewis’s death. Lewis was a longtime congressman from Georgia who participated in iconic civil rights actions, including the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 when police attacked Lewis and other protesters on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.Lewis implored people to participate in “good trouble, necessary trouble” to advance their causes, and this call serves as the underpinning for the 17 July actions. Dozens of advocacy and civil rights organizations are signed on as partners for the event.“The civil rights leaders of the past have shown us the power of collective action,” the protest’s website says. “That’s why on July 17, five years since the passing of congressman John Lewis, communities across the country will take to the streets, courthouses, and community spaces to carry forward his fight for justice, voting rights, and dignity for all.”Organizers said before Thursday’s events that they expect tens of thousands of people to turn out in small towns, suburbs and cities, the latest exercise of street protests distributed across the country to show opposition to Trump in all corners of the US. The last mass day of protest, No Kings, in June drew several million people in one of the biggest single days of protest in US history. Thursday’s events will probably be smaller as it is a weekday.Chicago will host the day’s flagship event Thursday evening, with additional main sites in Atlanta, St Louis, Annapolis and Oakland. Events include rallies, marches, candlelight vigils, food drives, direct action trainings, teach-ins and voter registration drives.The protest’s demands include an end to the Trump administration’s crackdown on civil rights, including the right to protest and voting rights; targeting of Black and brown Americans, immigrants and trans people; and the slashing of social programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), known colloquially as “food stamps”.“One of the things that John Lewis would always say is that if you see something that’s wrong, you have an obligation to speak up, to say something, to do something,” Daryl Jones, co-leader of the Transformative Justice Coalition, told reporters on Thursday. “That’s what July 17 is about – seeing things across this nation, seeing things that are being impacted, that are just not right. We’ve got to stand up and say something.” More

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      US Senate passes aid and public broadcasting cuts in victory for Trump

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      The US Senate has approved Donald Trump’s plan for billions of dollars in cuts to funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting, handing the Republican president another victory as he exerts control over Congress with little opposition.The Senate voted 51 to 48 in favour of Trump’s request to cut $9bn in spending already approved by Congress.Most of the cuts are to programmes to assist foreign countries stricken by disease, war and natural disasters, but the plan also eliminates the $1.1bn the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was due to receive over the next two years.Trump and many of his fellow Republicans argue that spending on public broadcasting is an unnecessary expense and reject its news coverage as blighted by “anti-right bias”.Standalone rescissions packages have not passed in decades, with lawmakers reluctant to cede their constitutionally mandated control of spending. But the Republicans, who hold narrow majorities in the Senate and House, have shown little appetite for resisting Trump’s policies since he began his second term in January.The $9bn at stake is small in the context of the $6.8tn federal budget, and represents a tiny portion of all the funds approved by Congress that the Trump administration has held up while it has pursued sweeping cuts, many ordered by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Dog)e.By mid-June, Trump was blocking $425bn in funding that had been appropriated and approved by Congress, according to Democratic lawmakers tracking frozen funding.However, the president and his supporters have promised more of the “rescission” requests to eliminate previously approved spending in what they say is an effort to pare back the federal government.The House of Representatives passed the rescissions legislation, without altering Trump’s request, by 214-212 last month. Four Republicans joined 208 Democrats in voting no.But after a handful of Republican senators balked at the extent of the cuts to global health programmes, Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said on Tuesday that Pepfar, a global programme to fight HIV/Aids launched in 2003 by President George W Bush, was being exempted.The change brought the size of the package of cuts to $9bn from $9.4bn, requiring another House vote before the measure could be sent to the White House for Trump to sign into law.The rescissions must pass by Friday. Otherwise, the request would expire and the White House required to adhere to spending plans passed by Congress.Two of the Senate’s 53 Republicans , Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, joined Democrats in voting against the legislation. “You don’t need to gut the entire Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” Murkowski said told the Senateskip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShe said the Trump administration had not provided assurances that battles against diseases such as malaria and polio worldwide would be maintained. Murkowski called for Congress to assert its role in deciding how federal funds were spent.The Republican Senate majority leader, John Thune of South Dakota, called Trump’s request a “small, but important step toward fiscal sanity”.Democrats scoffed at that, noting that congressional Republicans had this month passed a massive package of tax and spending cuts that nonpartisan analysts estimated would add more than $3tn to the country’s $36.2tn debt.Democrats accused Republicans of giving up Congress’s constitutionally mandated control of federal spending.“Today, Senate Republicans turn this chamber into a subservient rubber stamp for the executive, at the behest of Donald Trump,” Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, representing New York, said. “Republicans embrace the credo of cut, cut, cut now, and ask questions later.”The cuts would overturn bipartisan spending agreements most recently passed in a full-year stopgap funding bill in March. Democrats warn a partisan cut could make it more difficult to negotiate government funding bills that must pass with bipartisan agreement by 30 September to avoid a shutdown.Appropriations bills require 60 votes to move ahead in the Senate but the rescissions package needs just 51, meaning Republicans can pass it without Democratic support. More