Unreleased Epstein files include bawdy letter from Trump – report
The Wall Street Journal reports that one of the documents in the justice department files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is a bawdy letter Donald Trump sent to Epstein for his 50th birthday, in 2003.
According to the newspaper, which is owned by Trump supporter Rupert Murdoch, Trump had been asked to write a birthday letter to Epstein by Ghislaine Maxwell, who asked dozens of his friends and associates to contribute pages for a leather-bound album to mark his birthday.
Pages from the album-assembled before Epstein was first arrested in 2006-were examined by justice department officials who later investigated Epstein and Maxwell, the Journal says.
The letter bearing Trump’s name, which was reviewed by the Journal’s reporters, “contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker. 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 reports that letter concludes: “A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
On Tuesday evening, Trump denied writing the letter or drawing the picture in an interview with the Journal. “This is not me. This is a fake thing. It’s a fake Wall Street Journal story,” he said.
The newspaper also reports that “after the Journal sought comment from the president about the letter, Trump told reporters at the White House that he believed some Epstein files were ‘made up’ by former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden and former FBI Director James Comey”.
Trump then told a friendly interviewer on Wednesday that the FBI should investigate what he called “the Jeffrey Epstein hoax” as part of a criminal conspiracy against him. He went on to suggest that Democrats might have fabricated information in the files on Epstein during the Biden administration. “I can imagine what they put into files” he said.
Key events
Kira Lerner
Hundreds of protesters are gathered in Franklin Park in downtown Washington, many holding signs with John Lewis’s picture and the words “Good Trouble Lives On”.
It’s over 90F and many are huddled in the shade below trees. One protester from northern Virginia named Michael, who didn’t want to share his last name, stood proudly in the sun holding two large signs. One read “No More Ice” and the other compared Ice agents to masked kidnappers and criminals (“Spot the difference. Hint: There isn’t one.”)
Michael said he wants more people to refer to the Trump administration as what it is: “A fascist authoritarian takeover.”
Mary Baird traveled to Washington from North Carolina this morning and spent the earlier part of the day going door to door on Capitol Hill asking lawmakers why they haven’t voted to impeach Trump.
“Fascism will fall and when it falls, if you were complicit, you will be held accountable,” she said she told members of Congress. “And we didn’t have a great response. One Democrat had voted yes for the articles of impeachment Al Green brought to Congress. It was super disappointing.”
Federal Reserve chair Powell responds to White House accusations he mismanaged renovations
In a letter to the White House budget office director, Russ Vought, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, responded to accusations from the White House that he has mismanaged the renovation of the Federal Reserve Board’s Eccles building and 1951 Constitution Avenue building.
Powell refuted several of the claims made by Vought in a letter sent last week, informing his that the project was under investigation. “These renovations include terrace rooftop gardens, water features, VIP elevators, and premium marble,” Vought claimed.
“As explained on the Board’s public website, we take seriously the responsibility to be good stewards of public resources as we fulfill the duties given to us by Congress on behalf of the American people,” Powell wrote in his letter to Vought.
He then corrected Vought’s claims, point by point.
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There are no terrace rooftop gardens, Powell explained, just a front lawn that was referred to as a “garden terrace” in a planning document, and a green roof, “used to help with stormwater management and to increase building efficiency and roof longevity”.
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“There are no VIP dining rooms being constructed as part of the project,” Powell wrote. Conference rooms that are used for “mealtime meetings” are being renovated.
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The Fed buildings “were originally built with marble in the façades and stonework”, Powell wrote. “The project has salvaged the original exterior marble to be reinstalled and will use new domestic marble sourced from Georgia in places where the original was damaged or where needed to keep with historic preservation guidelines.”
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“There are no special, private, or VIP elevators being constructed as part of the project,” Powell explained.
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Although the Board’s initial design did include new water features for the 1951 Constitution Avenue building, “they have been eliminated”, Powell wrote. “Fountains that were original to the Eccles building are being restored.”
Powell sent his letter after the White House’s official “rapid response” account on X shared video with its 1.1 million followers of Vought telling Fox Business that he is investigating the costly renovation of the Federal Reserve headquarters. That renovation has been cited by Trump as a possible pretext he could use to fire Powell and claim it was “for cause”.
“As you know, Larry,” Vought said to Fox Business host Larry Kudlow, who advised Trump during his first term, “the president’s a builder, he finds it exasperating the extent to which this building is so expensive, and the extent to which it is cost overrun, and we’re going to look for as much information as we can get our hands on.”
Earlier on Thursday, representative French Hill, the Arkansas Republican who chairs the House financial services committee, had tried to pour cold water on speculation that Donald Trump might be on the verge of touching the third rail of the global economic system by firing Powell.
Asked by CBS correspondent Caitlin Huey-Burns if he thought there was “any circumstance in which the president could and should fire the Fed chair”, Hill replied: “He’s not gonna fire Jay Powell, and I don’t believe he can fire Jay Powell.”
But while Hill and other Republicans try to tamp down concerns that the president might cause financial panic by removing the US central bank’s chairman, Vought and others in the White House appear to be working to make life very uncomfortable for Powell, perhaps hoping that he can be pressured to resign.
George Chidi
The legacy of representative John Lewis rang loud in the Atlanta streets on Thursday as anti-Trump administration demonstrators marched down Auburn Avenue to the courtyard of Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s famed church, Ebenezer Baptist.
The protest was one of hundreds planned to take place on Thursday across the country, on a day of action organizers are calling Good Trouble Lives On, evoking a phrase the civil-right protest icon Lewis liked to use: “Get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”
“We honor John Lewis’s personal legacy, five years after being called home,” said the Rev Dr Jonathan Jay Augustine, the newly appointed senior pastor of Big Bethel AME Church. “He’s someone who gave his life for inclusion and for inclusiveness, and the things he gave his life for are under attack and being eroded away.”
About 1,000 people marched from Big Bethel and the landmark five-story tall mural of Lewis to Ebenezer Baptist, where the Rev Raphael Warnock, a Democratic senator from Georgia, is its senior pastor. Politics and faith are intertwined on these Atlanta streets, and Lewis’ legacy of political protest – and the unique animosity Donald Trump had for him, and for Atlanta’s fifth district, which Lewis represented – is rarely far from the thoughts expressed by civil rights and voting rights leaders here.
“Today we go to send a message from the birthplace of civil rights to … the one that wants to destroy the Department of Education, the one that wants to deport millions upon millions of people seeking a better life, the one who won’t release the Epstein files, the one who had the nerve to call the fifth district horrible and falling apart,” said Georgia NAACP president Gerald Griggs. “We still have a message for that man. In Georgia, no one is above the law. You still have a court date in the fifth district.”
White House releases memo from Trump’s doctor with chronic venous insufficiency diagnosis
The White House just released a copy of a memorandum from Donald Trump’s doctor to the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, dated today in which Navy physician, Sean Barbabella, DO, describes the tests that revealed the 79-year-old president has chronic venous insufficiency.
The memo says that “there was no evidence of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) or arterial disease” and says that recent photographs of bruising on the back of Trump’s hand “is consistent with minor soft tissue irritation from frequent handshaking and the use of aspirin, which is taken as part of a standard cardiovascular prevention regimen.”
The memo concludes with this summary: “President Trump remains in excellent health.”
Dr Barbabella, a Navy emergency physician who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, is the third consecutive osteopathic physician to serve as Physician to the President.
The US House of Representatives voted 308-122 to pass a bill to create a regulatory framework for US-dollar-pegged cryptocurrency tokens known as stablecoins, sending the bill to Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it into law.
The No votes included 110 Democrats and 12 Republicans.
The vote marks a watershed moment for the digital asset industry, which has been pushing for federal legislation for years and poured money into last year’s elections in order to promote pro-crypto candidates.
House lawmakers also passed a bill developing a regulatory framework for crypto. That will move on to the Senate for consideration.
The stablecoin bill, dubbed the Genius Act, received bipartisan support, with many Democrats joining Republicans to back the proposed federal rules. The 294-134 vote on the market structure bill, known as the Clarity Act, was also supported by dozens of Democrats.
Stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a constant value, usually a 1:1 dollar peg, are commonly used by crypto traders to move funds between tokens. Their use has grown rapidly in recent years, and proponents say that they could be used to send payments instantly.
If signed into law, the stablecoin bill would require tokens to be backed by liquid assets – such as US dollars and short-term Treasury bills – and for issuers to publicly disclose the composition of their reserves on a monthly basis.
Among the most vigorous opponents of the Genius Act has been Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator who was one of the nation’s top experts on bankruptcy before she ran for office.
‘Weaponization of data’: Ice given access to Medicaid data in move critics call a privacy betrayal
Jessica Glenza
Critics have slammed an agreement between Medicaid officials and Ice – which allows agents to examine a database of Americans’ personal information, including home addresses, social security numbers and ethnicities – as a privacy betrayal carrying serious civil rights and health risks.
“This is about the weaponization of data, full stop,” said Pramila Jayapal, a Democratic US representative from Washington state, who has worked extensively on US healthcare, in a statement on social media.
“Trump said he would go after the ‘worst of the worst’ immigrants, yet now is giving ICE EVERYONE’s Medicaid data, even as ICE targets US citizens. Oh, and undocumented immigrants can’t even enroll in Medicaid.”
Undocumented migrants are generally not eligible for Medicaid and only some lawfully present migrants may obtain coverage under the program. Eligible noncitizen immigrants represent only about 6% of people currently enrolled in Medicaid, according to the healthcare research non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation. The Trump administration has deeply cut Medicaid by adding bureaucracy and red tape.
It is unclear whether Ice agents have already accessed Medicaid information, according to the Associated Press, which first reported on the agreement. However, even the existence of such an agreement could deter people from seeking needed medical care, including for children.
“This is a privacy violation of unprecedented proportions and betrayal of trust, as the government has explicitly said, for decades, that this information will never be used for immigration enforcement,” said Ben D’Avanzo, a healthcare strategist at the National Immigration Law Center, on social media.
The day so far
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Donald Trump will not name a special counsel in the Jeffrey Epstein case, his White House press secretary confirmed. And asked to clarify what aspect of the case Trump believes to be a “hoax” Karoline Leavitt said he was referring to “the fact that Democrats have now seized on this”. But Trump’s efforts to dismiss the criticism over his administration’s handling of the Epstein case has showed no sign of working today, with more prominent figures from across the political spectrum – including his own allies – have emerged to attack the president. Some of his supporters even recorded videos burning their signature “Make America great again” hats.
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An evaluation of swelling in the president’s lower legs have revealed chronic venous insufficiency, “a common condition, particularly in individuals over the age of 70”, Leavitt said, reading from a doctor’s letter. she added: “Recent photos of the president have shown minor bruising on the back of his hand. This is consistent with minor soft tissue irritation from frequent handshaking and the use of aspirin, which is taken as part of a standard cardiovascular prevention regimen.”
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The House of Representatives is expected to vote tonight on Donald Trump’s $9bn funding cut to public media and to foreign aid, after the Senate delivered a victory for the president when it approved the package last night, though speaker Mike Johnson said it could slide to tomorrow. Congress faces a deadline tomorrow to approve the rescissions package if the Trump administration is to avoid having to spend the money.
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Republican senators advanced through the judiciary committee Emil Bove’s nomination to serve as a judge on a federal appeals court, after Democrats walked out of the session in protest of the GOP’s refusal to call a whistleblower who alleged the nominee advocated for ignoring court orders. Erez Reuveni, a former justice department official who was fired from his post, alleged that during his time at the justice department, Bove told lawyers that they “would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such court order” blocking efforts to remove immigrants to El Salvador. The GOP showed little indication of sharing those concerns, and voted to advance Bove along with 11 other nominees to federal judgeships nationwide.
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Despite the Trump administration’s claims to be focusing on the “worst of the worst” offenders in its highly aggressive and controversial deportation campaign, the latest Ice data suggests many undocumented immigrants without violent criminal records have been ensnared in the process, CBS News reports. Of the estimated 100,000 people who were deported between 1 January and 24 June by Ice, 70,583 were convicted criminals, but most of these documented transgressions were traffic or immigration offenses. Less than 1% had murder convictions and fewer than 2% had convictions for sex crimes or sexual assault. Around 15% were convicted of assault. Just under 30% had no criminal convictions at all.
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On that topic, Ice officials will be given access to the personal data of the nation’s 79 million Medicaid enrollees, including home addresses and ethnicities, to track down immigrants who may not be living legally in the US, according to an agreement obtained by The Associated Press.
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Trump’s huge spending boost for the Pentagon will produce an additional 26 megatons (Mt) of planet-heating gases – on a par with the annual carbon equivalent (CO2e) emissions generated by 68 gas power plants or the entire country of Croatia, new research reveals. The budget bonanza will push the Pentagon’s total greenhouse emissions to a staggering 178 Mt of CO2e, resulting in an estimated $47bn in economic damages globally, according to new analysis by the Climate and Community Institute (CCI), a US-based research thinktank, shared exclusively with the Guardian. It comes amid worsening climate breakdown, and as Americans – many of them Trump voters – are being hit by destructive extreme weather events such as wildfires, extreme heat and the recent floods in Texas, as well as sea-level rise and other slow-onset climate effects.
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A new US assessment has found that US strikes in June destroyed only one of three Iranian nuclear sites, NBC News reports, citing current and former US officials familiar with the matter. Trump rejected a military plan for further comprehensive strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, which would have lasted several weeks, the report added.
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Two months after Trump floated the farfetched idea of reopening Alcatraz as a federal prison, his attorney general Pam Bondi and interior secretary Doug Burgum visited the tourist site today. “The planned announcement to reopen Alcatraz as a federal penitentiary is the Trump administration’s stupidest initiative yet,” California Democratic congresswomen and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.
Trump supporters burn Maga hats after he dismisses Epstein files furor as ‘hoax’
Joseph Gedeon
As we’ve just heard from his press secretary, Donald Trump will not name a special counsel in the Jeffrey Epstein case. And asked to clarify what aspect of the case Trump believes to be a “hoax” Karoline Leavitt said he was referring to “the fact that Democrats have now seized on this”.
But Trump’s efforts to dismiss and deflect the criticism over his administration’s handling of the Epstein case has showed no sign of working today, with more prominent figures from across the political spectrum – including his own allies – have emerged to attack the president. Some of his supporters even recorded videos burning their signature “Make America great again” hats.
Days after the Republican speaker of the House and Trump loyalist Mike Johnson called for the release of all documents relating to the late financier, a convicted sex offender and longtime former friend of Trump’s, rebellion has continued to simmer within the president’s normally diehard base.
Trump’s former vice-president, Mike Pence, told CBS News yesterday: “I think the time has come for the administration to release all of the files regarding Jeffrey Epstein’s investigation and prosecution”. And far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, a frequent close adviser to Trump, called for the appointment of a special counsel to handle the Epstein files investigation.
“Obviously, this is not a complete hoax given the fact that [Epstein associate] Ghislaine Maxwell is currently serving 20 years in prison in Florida for her crimes and activities with Jeffrey Epstein, who we know is a convicted sexual predator,” Loomer said.
Trump called Netanyahu after strike on church in Gaza, White House says
Donald Trump called Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address an Israeli strike on Gaza’s sole Catholic church, Leavitt says.
Asked for Trump’s reaction to the news, Leavitt says: “It was not a positive reaction.”
The strike killed three people and injured 10 others including the parish priest, who used to receive daily calls from the late Pope Francis.
Leavitt dismisses concerns about cuts to NPR’s funding, saying “I’m not sure how NPR helps the public safety of our country”, calling the public broadcasting organization a “propaganda voice for the left”.
The European Union continues to be very eager in negotiating trade with the US, says Leavitt.
The bloc is seeking “ways to lower their tariff and their non-tariff barriers that we have long said harm our workers and our companies”, she said, adding that Donald Trump would not accept a postponement of the 1 August deadline when higher duties would come into effect.
