Columbia University agrees to pay more than $220m as settlement to Trump administration
Columbia University announced on Wednesday that it has signed an agreement with the U S government to pay $200m to settle multiple investigations into alleged violations of federal anti-discrimination laws.
The university also agreed to pay a further $21m “to settle investigations brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission”.
In return for the massive payments, to be made over three years, “a vast majority of the federal grants which were terminated or paused in March 2025 – will be reinstated and Columbia’s access to billions of dollars in current and future grants will be restored”, according to the university.
The agreement was signed by the university trustees and three Trump administration cabinet members: Pam Bondi, the attorney general, Linda MacMahon, the education secretary, and Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary.
The settlement comes after Columbia already gave in to many of the Trump administration’s demands, agreeing last week to adopt a controversial definition of antisemitism that precludes criticism of Israel and expelling or suspending over 70 students who briefly occupied a campus library reading room in May to protest the Israeli assault on Palestinians in Gaza.
On Monday, Harvard University argued in federal court that the Trump administration’s decision to cut $2.6bn in funding from that university, over similar claims, was an illegal, politically motivated attempt to pressure the school into adopting policies on student conduct, admissions, antisemitism and diversity more in line with the president’s own views.
Key events
House oversight subcommittee votes to subpoena Epstein files from justice department
The House oversight subcommittee on federal law enforcement voted on Wednesday to issue a subpoena to the justice department compelling “the full, unredacted release” of files from the federal investigations of Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender who socialized with future president Donald Trump throughout the 1990s.
A motion introduced by congresswoman Summer Lee, a Pennsylvania Democrat, passed by a vote of 8-2, with three votes coming from Republicans Nancy Mace, Scott Perry and Brian Jack, requires that files be released to the subcommittee.
Trump signs executive order barring government from using ‘woke’ AI models
Donald Trump just completed his remarks to a summit of artificial intelligence industry leaders in Washington and signed three executive orders, including one that his aide, the White House staff secretary Will Scharf, said would bar the US government from buying or promoting AI models that “embrace wokeism and critical race theory and all of these terrible theories that have done so much damage to our country”.
In his earlier remarks, Trump claimed that his predecessor Joe Biden had “established toxic diversity, equity and inclusion ideology as a guiding principle of American AI development”.
“But the American people do not want woke Marxist lunacy in the AI models,” Trump said.
Trump tells AI leaders they should not have to worry about copyright laws
In a rambling set of remarks at an AI summit at the Mellon Auditorium in Washington on Wednesday, Donald Trump just told assembled industry leaders that he wants them to “change the name” of artificial intelligence and that they should not be forced to pay the authors of articles or books they use to train their large language models.
The subject of the summit, Trump said at the start of his remarks, was “the greatest power of them all, the brain power”.
He went on to boast, as he does at political rallies, about the scale of his victory in the 2024 presidential election, saying that he won by “millions and millions of votes” (it was 2 million), and that he won far more “districts as they would call them” (he meant counties) than Kamala Harris.
“Around the globe, everybody is talking about artificial intelligence,” Trump said, before veering away from his prepared remarks to say: “Artificial – I can’t stand it. I don’t even like the name, you know I don’t like anything that’s artificial. So could we straighten that out please? We should change the name.”
As some in the crowd laughed, Trump added: “I actually mean that. I don’t like the name artificial, because it’s not artificial, it’s genius, it’s pure genius.”
Given that one of Trump’s first acts in office was to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, he might indeed mean it.
The president then called for what he called “a commonsense application of artificial and intellectual property rules”. Trump appeared to have accidentally added the word “artificial” to his prepared remarks.
“It’s so important,” the president continued. “You can’t be expected to have a successful AI program when every single article, book or anything else that you’ve read or studied, you’re supposed to pay for.”
“‘Gee, I read a book, I’m supposed to pay somebody,’” the president added, dismissing the intellectual property concerns of authors whose work has been used without payment in a sarcastic aside.
“You know, we appreciate that, but you just can’t do it, because it’s not doable,” the president went on. “And if you’re going to try and do that, you’re not going to have a successful program.”
“When a person reads a book or an article, you’ve gained great knowledge. That does not mean that you’re violating copyright laws or have to make deals with every content provider,” Trump said. “And that’s a big thing that you’re working on right now.”
Yemen attack plans Hegseth shared in Signal chat were from classified email – report
An independent Pentagon inspector general reportedly has evidence that the detailed attack plans for strikes on Yemen shared in at least two Signal group chats by defense secretary Pete Hegseth in March were, in fact, classified, contradicting repeated claims to the contrary from Trump administration officials.
“The Pentagon’s independent watchdog has received evidence that messages from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Signal account previewing a U.S. bombing campaign in Yemen derived from a classified email labeled “SECRET/NOFORN”, the Washington Post reports.
According to the Post, the Pentagon watchdog discovered that the 15 March strike plans Hegseth dropped in one Signal group that mistakenly included the editor of the Atlantic, and a second chat that included his wife, had first been shared “in a classified email with more than a dozen defense officials” sent through a secure, government system by General Michael Erik Kurilla, the top commander overseeing US military operations in the Middle East.
After the revelation that Hegseth had shared the secret attack plans on Signal with a journalist before the strikes, the defense secretary told reporters “nobody was texting war plans”. His chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, said at the time: “there were no classified materials or war plans shared”.
Another participant in the Signal group, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, testified to congress in March that “there was no classified material that was shared” in the chat.
Maya Yang
A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Kilmar Ábrego García must be released from jail as he awaits trial on human smuggling charges.
The decision from judge Waverly Crenshaw means that Donald Trump’s administration can potentially attempt to deport the Maryland father of two to his native El Salvador or a third country for a second time.
Crenshaw, sitting in Nashville, agreed with an earlier decision by a magistrate judge, concluding that prosecutors had not provided enough evidence to show Ábrego is either a danger to the public or a flight risk.
The judge said in his decision that the government “fails to show by a preponderance of the evidence – let alone clear and convincing evidence – that Ábrego is such a danger to others or the community that such concerns cannot be mitigated by conditions of release”.
Despite the bail ruling, Ábrego is not expected to walk free. His legal team has requested a 30-day delay in implementing the decision, opting to keep him in criminal detention while they consider next steps.
Meanwhile, in a separate courtroom in Maryland, US district judge Paula Xinis, who is overseeing a civil case Ábrego filed, issued a 72-hour freeze on any further attempts by the Trump administration to deport him. Xinis ruled that Ábrego must be returned to Maryland on an order of supervision.
Ghislaine Maxwell deposition set for 11 August at federal prison
The House oversight committee has officially subpoenaed Ghislaine Maxwell for a deposition to occur at the Federal Correctional Institution Tallahassee on 11 August.
“The facts and circumstances surrounding both your and Mr Epstein’s cases have received immense public interest and scrutiny,” Republican chairman James Comer, of Kentucky, wrote, addressing Maxwell.
“While the justice department undertakes efforts to uncover and publicly disclose additional information related to your and Mr Epstein’s cases, it is imperative that Congress conduct oversight of the federal government’s enforcement of sex trafficking laws generally and specifically its handling of the investigation and prosecution of you and Mr Epstein.”
An oversight subcommittee voted yesterday to subpoena Maxwell, the imprisoned sex trafficker who was a close associate of the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, to testify amid a political firestorm over the Trump administration’s decision not to release its remaining Epstein files.
White House calls WSJ report on Trump being told name in Epstein files ‘fake news’
“This is another fake news story, just like the previous story by the Wall Street Journal,” White House communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement in response to the WSJ’s report that the justice department informed Donald Trump in May about his name being in the Epstein files.
DOJ officials made Trump aware of decision not to continue investigations related to Epstein – report
In the WSJ’s report (paywall), according to the officials, attorney general Pam Bondi and her deputy informed the president at a meeting in the White House in May that his name was in the Epstein files, along with many other high-profile figures.
“The meeting set the stage for the high-profile review to come to an end,” the WSJ reports.
The publication notes that being mentioned in the documents is not a sign of wrongdoing:
The officials said it was a routine briefing that covered a number of topics and that Trump’s appearance in the documents wasn’t the focus.
They told the president at the meeting that the files contained what officials felt was unverified hearsay about many people, including Trump, who had socialized with Epstein in the past, some of the officials said. One of the officials familiar with the documents said they contain hundreds of other names.
They also told Trump that senior justice department officials didn’t plan to release any more documents related to the investigation of the convicted sex offender because the material contained child pornography and victims’ personal information, the officials said. Trump said at the meeting he would defer to the justice department’s decision to not release any further files.
Trump denied last week in response to a journalist’s question that Bondi had told him that his name was in the files.
Justice department told Trump in May that his name is in the Epstein files – WSJ
“When justice department officials reviewed what attorney general Pam Bondi called a ‘truckload’ of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein earlier this year, they discovered that Donald Trump’s name appeared multiple times,” the Wall Street Journal is reporting, citing senior administration officials.
I’ll bring you more on this as we get it.
US district judge Robin Rosenberg wrote that the court’s “hands are tied” and said the government had not requested the grand jury’s findings for use in a judicial proceeding, pointing out that district courts in the US are largely prohibited from unsealing grand jury testimony except in very narrow circumstances.
The ruling mentioned in my last post stems from federal investigations of Jeffrey Epstein in Florida in 2005 and 2007, according to court documents.
It doesn’t affect two other pending requests by the Department of Justice that seek to obtain transcripts of grand jury proceedings related to later federal investigations of Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, in New York, both of which led to separate criminal indictments.
Yesterday, the New York federal court said it would like to “expeditiously” resolve the Trump administration’s request, but it could not do so due to a number of missing submissions.
The Trump administration filed the petitions to unseal transcripts of the grand jury proceedings last week. It followed days of mounting pressure and criticism across the political spectrum over the DoJ’s decision not to release any further investigative evidence about Epstein despite many earlier promises that it would be released.
Federal judge rejects bid to unseal Epstein grand jury transcripts from Florida inquiry
A US judge has denied a justice department bid to unseal grand jury transcripts related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in South Florida, the first ruling in a series of attempts by Donald Trump’s administration to release more information on the case.
Reuters reports that US district judge Robin Rosenberg found that the justice department’s request in Florida did not fall into any of the exceptions to rules requiring grand jury material be kept secret.
The new photos and videos published by CNN have emerged today in a context of ever-rising frustration in Trump’s White House over its inability to make the Epstein story go away. Per Politico:
Donald Trump is angry. His team is exasperated. The Republican-controlled House is in near rebellion.
Trump and his closest allies thought they’d spend the summer taking a victory lap, having coaxed Congress into passing the megabill, bullied foreign governments into a slew of new trade arrangements, convinced Nato allies to spend billions more on collective defense and pressed world leaders to bow to various other demands from Doha to The Hague.
Instead, questions surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, who was found dead in his jail cell by suicide nearly six years ago, are overshadowing almost everything else.”
“POTUS is clearly furious,” a person close to the White House told Politico. “It’s the first time I’ve seen them sort of paralyzed.”
A senior White House official said the president is frustrated with his staff’s inability to tamp down conspiracy theories they once spread and by the wall of media coverage that started when attorney general Pam Bondi released information from the Epstein case that was already in the public domain.
“He feels there are way bigger stories that deserve attention,” the senior White House official said.
The frustration stems, in part, from an understanding that this is “a vulnerability,” said a White House ally. Trump has famously had his finger on the pulse of the Republican base for more than a decade but has, for now, lost the ability to dominate the narrative. That threatens to undermine the momentum and sense of invincibility the GOP felt at the beginning of the month when they were getting ready to boast about a slew of new tax cuts and border funding as their opening pitch to voters ahead of the 2026 midterms.
New photos and videos highlight close ties between Epstein and Trump
Anna Betts
Newly uncovered photos and video footage published by CNN show more links between the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump, including Epstein’s attendance at Trump’s wedding to Marla Maples at the Plaza hotel in New York in 1993.
The media organization said on Wednesday that Epstein’s attendance at the wedding ceremony was not widely known.
CNN also published footage from 1999 of Trump and Epstein attending a Victoria’s Secret fashion event in New York, where they are seen talking and laughing alongside Trump’s future wife, Melania Trump.
The outlet noted that the newly published material pre-dates any of Epstein’s known legal troubles.
CNN also published photos of Trump and Epstein at the 1993 opening of the Harley-Davidson Cafe in New York, where Trump is seen with his arm around two of his children, Eric and Ivanka, while Epstein stands beside them.
When asked for comment by CNN on the newly unearthed videos and photos, Trump reportedly responded: “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He then reportedly called CNN “fake news” and hung up the phone.
Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, said in a statement to CNN that the videos and photos were “nothing more than out-of-context frame grabs of innocuous videos and pictures of widely attended events to disgustingly infer something nefarious”.
“The fact is that the President kicked him out of his club for being a creep,” Cheung added. “This is nothing more than a continuation of the fake news stories concocted by the Democrats and the liberal media.”
Anna Betts
The Trump administration’s Department of Education announced on Wednesday that it has opened national-origin discrimination investigations into five US universities over what it described as “alleged exclusionary scholarships referencing foreign-born students”.
According to the announcement, the department’s office for civil rights has opened investigations into the University of Louisville, the University of Nebraska Omaha, the University of Miami, the University of Michigan and Western Michigan University.
The department said that the investigations will determine whether these universities are granting scholarships exclusively to students who are recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program, who came to the US as children, or who are undocumented “in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s (Title VI) prohibition against national origin discrimination”.
The investigation stems from complaints submitted by the Legal Insurrection Foundation’s Equal Protection Project, a conservative legal group.
The group alleges in the complaints that certain scholarships at these schools are limited to students with Daca status or who are undocumented, which they argue is in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “and its implementing regulations by illegally discriminating against students based on their national origin”.
For the full story, click here:
