Trump administration to sue Gavin Newsom over California’s new redistricting maps
The Trump administration is suing California governor Gavin Newsom after the state adopted new congressional maps last week.
The justice department is attempting to block the new boundaries, that voters overwhelmingly approved through Proposition 50. This would give Democrats in the Golden state five more seats in the House ahead of the 2026 midterms, and was a response to the redistricting battle that started in Texas, when the state’s GOP-run legislature gerrymandered their own map.
Attorney general Pam Bondi called the governor’s ballot initiative a “power grab”.
“Newsom should be concerned about keeping Californians safe and shutting down Antifa violence, not rigging his state for political gain,” she added.
Key events
Donald Trump signed his latest executive order today, but left the East Room of the White House without taking any questions from reporters.
After the first lady handed the podium over to Donald Trump, he praised his wife’s introduction.
“I think it’s very good, especially for someone that speaks five languages at least. I think that’s pretty amazing. I couldn’t do it,” he said.
Trump to sign executive order to help foster children transition to adulthood
Right now, we’re hearing from first lady Melania Trump as the president prepares to sign an executive order to help foster children access employment and education opportunities as they age out of the system.
“This executive order, fostering the future for American children and families, gives me tremendous pride. It is both empathetic and strategic. It will certainly be impactful,” she said.
Federal judge will issue ruling on whether prosecutor was appointed unlawfully by end of the month
A federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia said she would rule by Thanksgiving in a case brought by James Comey and Letitia James – that alleges the prosecutor charging them was unlawfully appointed. During today’s hearing, judge Cameron Currie did not issue a decision during the hour-long court hearing, but said she would probably rule by the end of the month.
Attorneys for the former FBI director and New York attorney general claim that Lindsey Halligan, who Donald Trump handpicked to be the new US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, was illegally installed because her role in office exceeds the 120-day for a role to filled by an interim appointee without confirmation from the Senate. Her predecessor, Erik Siebert, was also a temporary US attorney before he resigned from his position, stating he found insufficient evidence to prosecute Trump’s political enemies.
Fetterman hospitalized after fall, spokesperson says he’s receiving routine observation
Senator John Fetterman, the Democrat from Pennsylvania, has been hospitalized after a fall during an early morning walk. According to his spokesperson, “out of an abundance of caution” he was “transported to a hospital in Pittsburgh”.
Fetterman was one of the lawmakers in the Democratic caucus who split from the party to vote for the bill to reopen the federal government. He’s also been making media appearances recently to discuss his new book Unfettered. During his 2022 campaign for Senate, he also experienced a stroke.
“Upon evaluation, it was established he had a ventricular fibrillation flare-up that led to Senator Fetterman feeling light-headed, falling to the ground and hitting his face with minor injuries,” his spokesperson added. “Senator Fetterman had this to say: ‘If you thought my face looked bad before, wait until you see it now!’”
His representative noted that he was receiving “routine observation” at the hospital.
Oliver Holmes
After House Democrats on the oversight committee released three emails that seemed to suggest that Donald Trump was aware of Jeffrey Epstein’s conduct, Republican representatives followed up by releasing a much bigger cache of files.
Epstein, who died by suicide in federal prison in 2019, had a sour opinion of Trump in the years before his death.
“I have met some very bad people,” Epstein wrote in a 2017 email. “None as bad as Trump. Not one decent cell in his body.”
In other messages, Epstein described Trump as a “maniac” showing signs of “early dementia”.
My colleague Joseph Gedeon has put together this timeline of all the critical moments from the longest ever government shutdown, which over the last 43 days has caused turmoil for thousands of federal workers, a bitter battle over food benefits for the poorest Americans, thousands of cancelled flights, and a rare Democratic stand against Trump’s second-term agenda that progressives had been demanding since the election.
Top officials present Trump with potential military options for Venezuela – report
Senior military officials yesterday presented Donald Trump with updated options for potential operations in Venezuela, including strikes on land, CBS News is reporting, citing multiple sources familiar with the meetings at the White House.
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Dan Caine and other senior officials, including from the US intelligence community, briefed the president on potential military options for the coming days, and no final decision has been made, according to CBS’s sources.
Earlier this week, the US deployed the world’s largest warship, the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford, to the waters of the Caribbean and Latin America. The escalation of what is already the largest US military presence in the region since the 1989 invasion of Panama has led some to believe the risk of a US attack on Venezuela is growing.
In response, Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro, announced what a “massive deployment” of land, sea, air, river and missile forces, as well as civilian militia, to counter the US naval presence off his country’s coast.
In the last two months, the US military has conducted strikes on at least 21 vessels allegedly ferrying drugs from South America to the United States, killing almost 80 people. As my colleague Tiago Rogero notes, so far there is no data to support the US’s claim. It is not even known how much or what kind of drugs were being carried on each boat targeted, or whether they were carrying drugs at all, as the US has released no evidence or details about the vessels or their occupants. The UN has described the killings as extrajudicial executions.
You can read Tiago’s latest piece on the situation here:
Robert Tait
As we’ve been reporting, Donald Trump is facing the prospect of a politically damaging congressional vote on releasing the Jeffery Epstein files after attempts to press two female members of Congress to withdraw their backing for it appeared to have failed.
The reported refusal of Lauren Boebert, a Republican representative from Colorado, and Nancy Mace, from South Carolina, to remove their names from a discharge petition to force a vote leaves Trump exposed on an issue that carries the possibility of turning parts of his Maga base against him.
Boebert reportedly stood firm on supporting the petition after being invited by Trump to the White House in an effort to persuade her to withdraw her signature, according to the New York Times.
The outlet reported that the meeting happened hours after Democrats on the House of Representatives’ oversight committee released a trove of emails from the files that suggested that Trump may have known more about Epstein’s underage sex-trafficking activities than he previously acknowledged.
The NYT reported that the White House sought to persuade Boebert to change her mind – enlisting Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and the FBI director, Kash Patel – before issuing “vague threats” when that did not work.
The paper, citing people “familiar with her thinking”, reported that the hardline approach had the counterproductive effect of persuading Boebert that there may be a conspiracy to conceal the contents of the files and caused her to dig in.
Trump was reported to have unsuccessfully tried to contact Mace, who is running for governor of South Carolina, by phone. She subsequently wrote him a letter explaining her history of sexual abuse and rape, and explaining that she could not change her mind on the petition.
She later wrote in a social media post that “the Epstein petition is deeply personal.”
Two other Republican representatives, the formerly fiercely-reliable Trump loyalist and Georgia representative, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky, have signed the petition.
White House economic adviser says shutdown cost ‘$15bn a week’
The director of the national economic council, Kevin Hassett, told reporters outside the White House today the government shutdown, which lasted almost 43 days, “cost about $15bn per week”.
Hassett added that the Council of Economic Advisers – a separate body – estimates that 60,000 non-federal workers lost their jobs because of the economic impact of the shutdown.
Republican Nancy Mace comes to Trump’s defense while committing to discharge petition
Congresswoman Nancy Mace, a Republican representative from South Carolina, explained why she signed the discharge petition to compel a vote on the House floor to release the full trove of justice department records on Jeffrey Epstein.
“The Epstein petition is deeply personal,” Mace said, going on to chronicle the several instances of abuse and domestic violence she had endured over the years. A reminder that Mace accused four men – including her former fiance – of rape, physical abuse and sexual misconduct during a nearly hourlong speech earlier this year on the House floor.
The lawmaker, who has become a staunch ally of the president in recent years, also came to his defense, as he faces questions about his knowledge of Epstein’s conduct following the release of the latest batch of emails by the House oversight committee. “As a survivor I will defend every last attack on President Trump to the death, everywhere … And all this fake news, well, it’s just noise. I will NEVER abandon other survivors,” she added. Mace is one of four Republicans who signed the discharge petition – joining Thomas Massie, Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
White House continues to say new release of Epstein emails is a distraction and ‘hoax’
White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has said that the latest release of emails from Jeffrey Epstein are part of “another Democrat + Mainstream Media hoax, fueled by fake outrage, to distract from the President’s wins”.
In a post on X, she added that “if not for the Jeffrey Epstein story, CNN would be forced to talk about how Chuck Schumer and the Democrats got shellacked by President Trump and Republicans in the government shutdown fight.”
Newly released Jeffrey Epstein emails have cast further doubt on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s account of when he cut ties with the child sex offender and his denials about meeting his accuser Virginia Giuffre.
In March 2011, four months after he later claimed to have ended his relationship with Epstein, the former prince told him and the convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell: “I can’t take any more of this,” in response to allegations put to him by the Mail on Sunday.
Another email from Epstein in 2011 appears to confirm the veracity of a photograph of the then Prince Andrew holding a then 17-year-old Giuffre by the waist in 2001.
In the email Epstein said: “Yes, she was on my plane and yes, she had her photo taken with Andrew, as many of my employees have.”
Mountbatten-Windsor, who denies any wrongdoing, suggested in a 2019 BBC Newsnight interview that the photograph may have been doctored and that he had “absolutely no memory” of it being taken.
The latest emails were among thousands of documents from Epstein’s estate published by the US House oversight committee on Wednesday.
One email shows Mountbatten-Windsor asking Epstein how he planned to respond to the Mail on Sunday’s inquiry. Epstein said: “Im [sic] not sure how to respond, the only person she didn’t have sex with was Elvis.”
The former prince appeared to take up the issue with Maxwell in a separate chain, saying: “Hey there! What’s all this? I don’t know anything about this! You must SAY so please. This has NOTHING to do with me. I can’t take any more of this.”
Another email from Mountbatten-Windsor about the press query said: “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.”
It’s worth highlighting that under the discharge petition’s rules, the vote normally requires a seven-day waiting period after it receives the necessary 218 signatures to force a vote on the House floor. In this case, House speaker Mike Johnson is working expeditiously to get it before members before Thanksgiving recess.
