Epstein survivors accused Melania Trump of ‘shifting the burden’ after surprise statement
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
Melania Trump has been accused of “shifting the burden” onto sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s survivors after her extraordinary statement at the White House.
As part of her statement distancing herself from the disgraced financier, the first lady also called on Congress to take sworn testimony in a public hearing from Epstein victims. Several victims did meet with the House oversight committee in a closed session last fall.
But on Thursday evening in a joint statement released to the media, a group of survivors said the first lady had moved to “protect those in power”.
They accused her of “shifting the burden onto survivors under politicized conditions to protect those with power”.
The statement read:
Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein have already shown extraordinary courage by coming forward, filing reports, and giving testimony.
Asking more of them now is a deflection of responsibility, not justice.
It added:
It also diverts attention from [former attorney general] Pam Bondi, who must answer for withheld files and the exposure of survivors’ identities.
Those failures continue to put lives at risk while shielding enablers. Survivors have done their part. Now it’s time for those in power to do theirs.
The first lady told reporters on Thursday that she “never had a relationship” with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
It was unclear which specific accusations spurred the first lady to respond publicly. She delivered her scripted remarks at a podium in the same room Donald Trump used to address the nation on the war in Iran last week.
“I [have] never been friends with Epstein,” Trump said in her statement. “I am not Epstein’s victim. Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump.”
The first lady went on to say that she and the president were invited to the same parties as Epstein “from time to time” as “overlapping in social circles is common in New York City and Palm Beach”. But she specifically denied that her emails to Maxwell were anything more than “casual correspondence”.
Read the full story here:
In other developments:
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The push from House Democrats to pass a war powers resolution by unanimous consent failed yesterday, after the pro forma speaker, Republican Chris Smith, did not recognize Democrats. It was always a tall order, given that pushback from even a single member would require Democrats to pursue a formal vote on the resolution.
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While it’s largely a symbolic move, Democrats in both chambers have vowed to hold votes again when Congress returns from recess next week. On the steps of the US Capitol, lower chamber Democrats appeared confident that when Congress returns from recess next week, they will have at least a couple of House GOP members who are willing to buck their party and pass the resolution.
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Donald Trump told NBC News that he is “very optimistic” a peace deal with Iran was within reach as a diplomatic delegation led by his vice-president JD Vance prepared to head to Pakistan for high-stakes talks aimed at ending the war this weekend. Iran’s leaders “talk much differently when you’re at a meeting than they do to the press. They’re much more reasonable,” the president said, in line with his administration’s narrative that there’s a disconnect between what Tehran says publicly and privately.
Key events
Trump says Iranians only alive ‘to negotiate’ and US is ‘loading up the ships’ in event of no deal
Donald Trump has said that the Iranians “have no cards” and the only reason they are alive “is to negotiate”.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, the president said:
The Iranians don’t seem to realize they have no cards, other than a short term extortion of the World by using International Waterways. The only reason they are alive today is to negotiate!
It follows Trump giving an interview to the New York Post, in which he said the US is loading its warships with the “best weapons” in case talks with Tehran – set to begin in Islamabad tomorrow – fail.
“We’re going to find out in about 24 hours,” he said. “We’re loading up the ships with the best weapons ever made, even at a higher level than we use to do a complete decimation.
“And if we don’t have a deal, we will be using them and we will be using them very effectively.”
CNN is reporting that ambassadors from Israel, Lebanon and the United States will hold a first round of preparatory talks in Washington today to set the table for future negotiations between Israel and Lebanon, citing an Israeli official and sources familiar with the talks.
Per CNN’s report, this first round of discussions will be aimed at reaching an agreement on the conditions and agenda for direct negotiations between Israel and Lebanon, which Israel has said would be aimed at disarming Hezbollah and establishing “peaceful relations” between the two countries.
Lebanon is demanding that Israel agrees to a ceasefire before negotiations can begin, as Tel Aviv continues its ferocious bombardment on the country.
The talks will be held with Michel Issa, the US ambassador to Lebanon; Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the US; and Nada Hamadeh Moawad, Lebanon’s ambassador to the US, according to CNN’s sources.
Khanna calls on Melania Trump to testify before Congress: ‘She has relevant information’
Melania Trump’s televised statement on Thursday, in which she said that she “never had a relationship” with Jeffrey Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell, prompted a sharp response from one of the Democratic lawmakers behind the legislation requiring the justice department to release Epstein‑related files.
Ro Khanna said the first lady should now testify before Congress. “She has relevant information. If she didn’t have relevant information, how could she say that Epstein was not acting alone?” the congressman told MS NOW.
“We need to ask her who were the other men that she believes may have been involved in raping or abusing these young girls,” the California Democrat said. “What did she know?”
Tom Ambrose
Pope Leo has issued a thinly veiled criticism of the US-Israeli war on Iran, saying “military action will not create space for freedom”.
Writing on X, he also said that God “does not bless any conflict”.
He said:
God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.
Military action will not create space for freedom or times of #Peace, which comes only from the patient promotion of coexistence and dialogue among peoples.
Democrats blast Trump and war on Iran for latest inflation surge
Democrats have blasted the Trump administration following the latest inflation report, which shows a 3.3% surge in consumer prices since March 2025.
“Today’s data shows that Trump’s war with Iran has driven up costs and delivered the worst inflation reading in nearly two years,” said Elizabeth Warren, the ranking member on the Senate banking committee. “Trump’s chaotic tariffs were already squeezing American families, and now he’s sent energy prices skyrocketing, with gas prices above $4 a gallon and the cost of food still too high. Every family struggling to fill their gas tank or buy groceries knows exactly who is responsible.”
Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat, said that the March consumer price index (CPI) was “another reason we must end this war now”.
“Americans are paying the price for Trump’s idiocy every day,” he said in a statement on social media.
In an interview with CNBC on Friday, Pete Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary under Joe Biden said that the Trump administration is “actively making energy prices higher with a war that nobody wanted, nobody asked for”.
“That, of course, is the direct reason why inflation is higher now than it was before,” said Buttigieg, who is widely considered a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.
On Truth Social, Donald Trump issued a cryptic message this morning that appeared to be in reference to the upcoming negotiations in Islamabad, but remains unclear.
“WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL RESET!!!” he wrote.
A reminder that my colleagues are covering the latest out of the Middle East at our dedicated live blog.
This includes the news that vice-president JD Vance warned Iran not to “play” the US during upcoming negotiations in Pakistan.
Vance spoke to reporters ahead of travelling to Islamabad today for a weekend of talks with the regime and mediators. “If the Iranians are willing to negotiate in good faith, we’re certainly willing to extend the open hand,” he said. “If they’re gonna try and play us, then they’re gonna find that the negotiating team is not that receptive.”
Lauren Aratani
The annualized inflation rate has not pushed past 3% since summer 2024, when inflation was finally cooling after reaching a generational high of 9.1% in June 2022.
The war on Iran has driven the American economy into deeper uncertainty, adding to a precariousness that first came with Donald Trump’s tariffs last year.
US inflation surges amid war on Iran and spiking oil prices
US inflation surged in March, according to the latest consumer price index (CPI) report released on Friday.
Overall prices are now up by 3.3% compared to a year ago, and up by 0.9% since February 2026.
Donald Trump will be in Washington for much of the day.
He’ll be in closed door policy meetings until he leaves for Charlottesville, Virginia, where he’s due to attend a meeting and roundtable dinner with Make America Great Again Inc, the pro-Trump super pac at 6:30pm ET. That’s not open to the media, but we’ll let you know if anything changes and we hear from the president.
Donald Trump’s administration this week acknowledged it made a significant error in figures it used to help justify a fraud probe into New York’s Medicaid program.
The error, one of at least a few misrepresentations in its description of the program, prompted health analysts to question how many of the Republican administration’s sweeping anti-fraud efforts around the country were based on faulty findings, AP reported.
“These numbers could have been cleared up in a phone call, so it’s really slapdash,” said Fiscal Policy Institute senior health policy adviser Michael Kinnucan, whose recent analysis called attention to the Trump administration’s inaccurate claim.
The mistake appeared in comments made last month by Dr Mehmet Oz , the administrator of the Centers for Medicare + Medicaid Services, in a social media video and in a letter to New York’s Democratic governor announcing the fraud investigation.
Oz claimed that New York’s Medicaid program last year provided some five million people with personal care services, which assist people in need with basic activities like bathing, grooming and meal preparation. That would add up to nearly three-quarters of the state’s 6.8 million Medicaid enrollees.
“That level of utilization is unheard of,” Oz said in the video, adding in his post that New York needs to “come clean about its Medicaid program.”
José Olivares
A Trump administration appointee has delayed publication of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that shows benefits related to the Covid vaccine, leading to concerns that the administration is engaging in behind-the-scenes tactics to undermine vaccines.
Research by CDC scientists found that the Covid vaccine cut the likelihood of emergency room visits and hospitalizations for healthy adults last winter by about half, according to reporting from the Washington Post. The acting CDC director, Jay Bhattacharya, reportedly delayed the report’s publication due to concerns surrounding the research’s methodology.
The move to postpone the publication of the CDC’s report has raised concerns among experts and former CDC officials about further attacks to the agency’s vaccine-related work by the Trump administration.
Since Trump took office last January, health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr and his appointees have engaged in public and behind-the-scenes maneuvers to hamper vaccine research and recommendations.
“This is definitely an escalation of this administration’s undermining of CDC science,” said Dr Fiona Havers, a former senior adviser on vaccine policy at the CDC. “The fact that they are now blocking this is extremely concerning.”
Havers resigned from the CDC last year, in response to the Trump administration’s approaches to vaccine policy.
David Smith
Donald Trump is an “evil human being” who “wants to be an emperor” and should be removed from office over the war in Iran, Yassamin Ansari, an Iranian American member of the US Congress, has told the Guardian.
Ansari, the daughter of Iranian immigrants who decades ago fled the regime, spoke out after the president threatened to wipe out Iran’s civilisation before backing down and announcing an uncertain two-week ceasefire.
As news of the truce broke on Tuesday night, Ansari said in a statement she was “momentarily relieved for the 90 million Iranians who just spent the worst 24 hours of their lives thinking they were about to face nothing short of a nuclear catastrophe”.
But the Arizona Democrat maintained that Trump’s dire promises of genocide and war crimes warrant intervention by the cabinet or Congress. Earlier on Tuesday, Ansari warned that the president represents a clear and present danger to Iran, the US and the world.
“There is no doubt in my mind he is mentally unstable and not all there but I also believe he is a deeply troubled, evil human being that only cares about himself and his family,” she said in a phone interview. “He has shown that throughout his entire life. He has shown that throughout his presidency by ripping away healthcare and basic necessities from the average American, while he and his family have made billions of dollars.”
Robert Mackey
Melania Trump’s surprise statement denying she had any relationship with Jeffrey Epstein sparked confusion about why she had chosen to speak out, and whether Donald Trump knew that the first lady was planning to draw attention to a subject he has called for the public to move on from.
Even normally well-sourced correspondents for rightwing outlets were at a loss to explain why Melania Trump felt the need to issue the seemingly out-of-the-blue statement about her relationship with Epstein, the late sex offender who socialized with her husband for nearly two decades, or his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
The Fox News senior White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich said that she and her team were baffled.
“We’ve been trying to understand why she made it today, if there was something that she is reacting to that might already be in the news that has upset her, or if there’s a story that’s yet to come out, that’s about to drop that she wanted to get ahead of,” Heinrich told Fox viewers. “Because it did feel like it came out of left field for us.”
“We’re still trying to figure out why she made this statement today,” she added. “I’ve called every contact in my phone, including the president, and not gotten any answers.”
The New York Post, which, like Fox, is owned by Rupert Murdoch and often acts like an arm of the Trump White House communications team, was also puzzled. “It’s unclear why the first lady chose to hold the press event at a time when the White House is trying to move on from the Epstein saga that has been a drag on her husband’s second term,” the New York tabloid reported.
Epstein survivors accused Melania Trump of ‘shifting the burden’ after surprise statement
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
Melania Trump has been accused of “shifting the burden” onto sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s survivors after her extraordinary statement at the White House.
As part of her statement distancing herself from the disgraced financier, the first lady also called on Congress to take sworn testimony in a public hearing from Epstein victims. Several victims did meet with the House oversight committee in a closed session last fall.
But on Thursday evening in a joint statement released to the media, a group of survivors said the first lady had moved to “protect those in power”.
They accused her of “shifting the burden onto survivors under politicized conditions to protect those with power”.
The statement read:
Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein have already shown extraordinary courage by coming forward, filing reports, and giving testimony.
Asking more of them now is a deflection of responsibility, not justice.
It added:
It also diverts attention from [former attorney general] Pam Bondi, who must answer for withheld files and the exposure of survivors’ identities.
Those failures continue to put lives at risk while shielding enablers. Survivors have done their part. Now it’s time for those in power to do theirs.
The first lady told reporters on Thursday that she “never had a relationship” with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
It was unclear which specific accusations spurred the first lady to respond publicly. She delivered her scripted remarks at a podium in the same room Donald Trump used to address the nation on the war in Iran last week.
“I [have] never been friends with Epstein,” Trump said in her statement. “I am not Epstein’s victim. Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump.”
The first lady went on to say that she and the president were invited to the same parties as Epstein “from time to time” as “overlapping in social circles is common in New York City and Palm Beach”. But she specifically denied that her emails to Maxwell were anything more than “casual correspondence”.
Read the full story here:
In other developments:
-
The push from House Democrats to pass a war powers resolution by unanimous consent failed yesterday, after the pro forma speaker, Republican Chris Smith, did not recognize Democrats. It was always a tall order, given that pushback from even a single member would require Democrats to pursue a formal vote on the resolution.
-
While it’s largely a symbolic move, Democrats in both chambers have vowed to hold votes again when Congress returns from recess next week. On the steps of the US Capitol, lower chamber Democrats appeared confident that when Congress returns from recess next week, they will have at least a couple of House GOP members who are willing to buck their party and pass the resolution.
-
Donald Trump told NBC News that he is “very optimistic” a peace deal with Iran was within reach as a diplomatic delegation led by his vice-president JD Vance prepared to head to Pakistan for high-stakes talks aimed at ending the war this weekend. Iran’s leaders “talk much differently when you’re at a meeting than they do to the press. They’re much more reasonable,” the president said, in line with his administration’s narrative that there’s a disconnect between what Tehran says publicly and privately.
