Justice department watchdog to review release of Epstein files
The justice department’s watchdog announced an investigation today into the DoJ’s compliance with a law mandating the release of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s investigative files.
The office of inspector general, which operates independently of the justice department, said it would “evaluate the DOJ’s processes for identifying, redacting, and releasing records in its possession as required by the act.”
That legislation, passed in November, forces the department to open its files on the sex trafficking investigations into Epstein and his former associate, Ghislaine Maxwell.
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Asked by a reporter during the event if his dark threats to end Iranian civilization meant that he would consider using a nuclear weapon, Trump said: “No.”
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“No. We don’t need it. Why would I need it?” he continued before attacking the reporter for asking.
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“Why would a stupid question like be asked?” Trump said.
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“Why would I use a nuclear weapons when we’ve totally, in a very conventional way, decimated then without it?” the president added. “No, I wouldn’t use it. A nuclear weapon should never be allowed to be used by anybody.”
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In the past, Trump has repeatedly expressed a horror of nuclear weapons, which he said stemmed from a warnings delivered by his uncle John, a longtime professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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“My uncle used to tell me about nuclear before nuclear was nuclear,” Trump said during his 2016 campaign for the presidency.
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“I hate nuclear more than any. My uncle was a professor was at MIT, used to tell me about nuclear,” Trump told Anderson Cooper during a CNN town hall event in 2016.
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Donald Trump is now taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office, repeating his claims that the war in Iran is going well. He called a reporter who asked why the war is still going on “such a disgrace” and noted that the war had not yet lasted as long as the Vietnam war.
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Minutes earlier, while showing off plans to renovate the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the president made the odd decision to remind the public that he once gave a speech at the site, in the same location where Martin Luther King Jr delivered his famed “I have a dream” speech. As he has for years, Trump argued that he attracted a larger crowd for his speech, at a Fourth of July celebration in 2019, than the civil rights leader did in 1963.
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Trump’s decision to bring up his 2019 speech was unusual because the most famous part of that Trump address was when, badly misreading remarks on a rain-soaked teleprompter, he gave a wildly inaccurate account of US military history.
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After claiming that the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary war was “named after” George Washington in 1775, he went on to say that, during the War of 1812: “Our army manned the ampert, it ranned the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do”.
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Trump spoke at the Lincoln Memorial during Fourth of July celebrations in Washington DC in 2019.”,”caption”:”Donald Trump spoke at the Lincoln Memorial during Fourth of July celebrations in Washington DC in 2019.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters”}}],”attributes”:{“pinned”:false,”keyEvent”:true,”summary”:false},”blockCreatedOn”:1776974580000,”blockCreatedOnDisplay”:”16.03 EDT”,”blockLastUpdated”:1776976405000,”blockLastUpdatedDisplay”:”16.33 EDT”,”blockFirstPublished”:1776975402000,”blockFirstPublishedDisplay”:”16.16 EDT”,”blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone”:”16.16″,”title”:”Trump boasts about 2019 speech in which he said US army ‘took over the airports’ in war of 1812″,”contributors”:[],”primaryDateLine”:”Thu 23 Apr 2026 17.08 EDT”,”secondaryDateLine”:”First published on Thu 23 Apr 2026 06.36 EDT”},{“id”:”69ea711d8f088a76d6482aaf”,”elements”:[{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
Trump said that the deal with the pharmaceutical company Regeneron to lower drug prices is a huge accomplishment that should lead to midterm election success.
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“By itself, we should win the midterms,” Trump said during the White House event.
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“That should be front page news, but it won’t be,” Trump added.
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Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, has released the text for an extension of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa). The language includes a three-year extension of the provision and some amendments. Notably, the new text released by Republicans does not include the need for a warrant to obtain communications, which had been a demand from several conservative hardliners and Democrats alike. The legislation will now head to the House rules committee, where it may face further right-wing opposition, before it can end up on the floor for a vote.
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The DoJ’s internal watchdog announced an investigation today into the department’s compliance with a law mandating the release of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s investigative files. The justice department’s office of inspector general, which operates independently, said it would “evaluate the DOJ’s processes for identifying, redacting, and releasing records in its possession as required by the act.”
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Donald Trump told the BBC that next week’s state visit from King Charles and Queen Camilla could “absolutely” repair US relations with the UK. This comes after a once cordial relationship with UK prime minister Keir Starmer has turned icy – following the latter’s unwillingness to support the US-Israel war in Iran. The president told the BBC that his relationship with Starmer would only “recover” if the prime minister changed course on immigration.
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The Trump administration has moved to reclassify marijuana, more than four months after Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the attorney general to move it from schedule I to schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act. The schedule I classification meant marijuana was alongside heroin, LSD, MDMA and synthetic opioids, whereas a schedule III classification put it in the same category as ketamine, anabolic steroids and testosterone.
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The president also has ordered the US Navy “to shoot and kill any boat” that is laying mines in the strait of Hormuz. On Truth Social, he also said that US minesweepers were working “at a tripled up level” to clear any mines from the waters.
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Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, has released the text for an extension of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa).
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The language includes a three-year extension of the provision and some amendments. These include a monthly FBI review of any US citizens included in collected communication by intelligence agencies, and an investigation by the department’s inspector general for a review of any civil liberties that may have been compromised.
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A reminder that section 702, which is now set to expire on 30 April, allows national security agents to collect and review texts and emails sent to and from foreigners living outside the US without a warrant. If Americans are talking to a non-US target living abroad, there is potential for them to get swept up in the investigation.
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Notably, the new text released by Republicans does not include the need for a warrant to obtain communications, which had been a demand from several conservative hardliners and Democrats alike.
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The legislation will now head to the House rules committee, where it may face further right-wing opposition, before it can end up on the floor for a vote.
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Donald Trump, for his part, has pushed GOP lawmakers to “UNIFY” and pass a “clean” Fisa extension, while baselessly claiming he’s been a victim of section 702’s privacy vulnerabilities.
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During a House appropriations committee hearing as part of Donald Trump’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year, Howard Lutnick was grilled about his relationship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
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Represenative Madeleine Dean, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, asked whether the president expressed “concerns” about the commerce secretary’s relationship with Epstein. Lutnick refused to comment.
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A reminder, the commerce secretary was a longtime next-door neighbor of Epstein in New York. He has previously claimed that he distanced himself from Epstein in 2005.
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However, the justice department’s release of case files showed that Lutnick had two engagements with Epstein years past that. He attended a 2011 event at Epstein’s home. And Lutnick’s family had lunch with Epstein on his private island in 2012 – four years after Epstein was sentenced to 13 months in jail for procuring a minor for prostitution.
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Lutnick admitted to the 2012 lunch during his 10 February testimony before the Senate appropriations committee. “I did have lunch with him, as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation,” Lutnick said. In that testimony, Lutnick also insisted that he “barely had anything to do” with Epstein. CBS also reported that Lutnick and Epstein both appeared to have stakes in a now-shuttered advertising company, Adfin, as recently as 2014. Inclusion in the files does not imply wrongdoing.
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However, during today’s hearing, the commerce secretary refused to answer Dean’s questions about whether he had any further business ties with Epstein beyond Adfin.
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Dean noted that three female cabinet secretaries have been ousted from Trump’s White House: Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem and Lori Chavez-DeRemer. “If President Trump has even a shred of concern about accountability for Jeffrey Epstein’s enablers,” Dean said to Lutnick, “he would fire you too”.
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The New York Times is reporting that the justice department has identified 384 foreign-born Americans whose citizenship it wants to revoke as part of its efforts to speed up denaturalizations by assigning the cases to prosecutors in multiple US attorney’s offices across the country.
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Civil litigators in 39 regional offices would soon be assigned to file denaturalization cases against the individuals, according to an official who spoke with The Times.
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Matthew Tragesser, a DOJ spokesman, told the news outlet that officials were “pursuing the highest volume of denaturalization referrals in history” from the department of homeland security. “The Department of Justice is laser focused on rooting out criminal aliens defrauding the naturalization process,” he added.
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“Citizenship fraud is a serious crime; anyone who has broken the law and obtained citizenship through fraud and deceit will be held accountable,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, told The Times.
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The justice department’s watchdog announced an investigation today into the DoJ’s compliance with a law mandating the release of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s investigative files.
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The office of inspector general, which operates independently of the justice department, said it would “evaluate the DOJ’s processes for identifying, redacting, and releasing records in its possession as required by the act.”
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That legislation, passed in November, forces the department to open its files on the sex trafficking investigations into Epstein and his former associate, Ghislaine Maxwell.
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Donald Trump told the BBC that next week’s state visit from King Charles and Queen Camilla could “absolutely” repair US relations with the UK.
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In a phone interview, Trump also called King Charles a “fantastic man”.
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“I know him well, I’ve known him for years,” the president added. “He’s a brave man, and he’s a great man. They would absolutely be a positive.”
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This comes after a once cordial relationship with UK prime minister Keir Starmer has turned icy – following the latter’s unwillingness to support the US-Israel war in Iran. Publicly, Trump has said that Starmer is “no Winston Churchill” and been vocal about his disappointment with the UK’s attitude to the conflict.
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The president told the BBC that his relationship with Starmer would only “recover” if the prime minister changed course on immigration.
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Trump and first lady Melania Trump will host King Charles and Queen Camilla at the White House on Monday 27 April, and the King will then address Congress on Tuesday 28 April before continuing his tour in Virginia and New York. This will be the first state visit of a British monarch since 2007 when King Charles’s mother, Queen Elizabeth II travelled to the US.
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Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House oversight committee, slammed recent comments by the panel’s Republican chair James Comer that members are “split” on whether to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell, the accomplice of late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
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“[Maxwell] is a sexual abuser who facilitated the rape of women and children. This is a shameful way to treat survivors. Oversight Democrats are united in opposing any pardon,” Garcia wrote on social media.
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This comes after Comer told Politico that while the committee is divided over whether to grant clemency to Maxwell, he “thinks it looks bad”.
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“Honestly, other than Epstein, the worst person in this whole investigation is Maxwell,” the Kentucky Republican told the outlet.
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Donald Trump said he has ordered the US Navy “to shoot and kill any boat” that is laying mines in the strait of Hormuz.
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On Truth Social, he also said that US minesweepers were working “at a tripled up level” to clear any mines from the waters.
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You’ve likely seen that the Senate adopted the plan for the budget blueprint for ICE and border patrol after an all-night “vote-a-rama”.
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This is, in fact, not a congressional dance break.
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Rather it’s the marathon endgame of budget consideration. Even though debate time expires, senators can still fire off unlimited amendment votes.
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Democrats tried to add provisions ranging from lowering healthcare costs to protecting consumers from the economic fallout of the Iran war. Those amendments were symbolic, and none were adopted.
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As this is being handled through the reconciliation process, the budget plan only needed a simple majority in the Senate, which it got. Now, the House will have to advance the proposal. Once that happens, committees can start writing the actual reconciliation bill, where the real spending and policy changes live.
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However, that bill will face its own hurdles, and another simple‑majority vote, before anything can become law.
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President Donald Trump’s administration is considering more than doubling an annual refugee limit to bring more white South Africans into the US, according to three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
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Trump, a Republican, paused refugee admissions from around the world when he took office in January 2025. Weeks later, he issued an executive order prioritizing the resettlement of European-descended Afrikaners, saying they faced race-based persecution in majority-Black South Africa, Reuters reported. South Africa’s government vehemently denies the claims.
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The US Refugee Admissions Program was formally established in 1980 after hundreds of thousands of people fled wars in Vietnam and Cambodia. The program expanded to provide safe haven to persecuted people around the globe. Trump has used it almost exclusively to bring white South Africans into the US, part of a broader upending of norms around humanitarian protection.
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In recent weeks, US officials have discussed expanding the 7,500-person refugee cap by 10,000 to allow more South Africans of Afrikaner ethnicity to obtain refugee status, said people familiar with internal planning, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share non-public government discussions.
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A state department spokesperson did not confirm or deny the discussions around expanding the refugee admissions ceiling.
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“If the president decides to raise the FY 2026 refugee admissions cap, he will do so at the appropriate time, and any numbers discussed at this point are only speculation,” the spokesperson said.
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Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.
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The Senate voted to adopt a $70bn budget plan to fund ICE and Border Patrol as part of a new effort to reopen the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
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The impasse has been going on since mid-February as Democrats have demanded policy changes in the wake of fatal shootings of two protesters by federal agents. The budget resolution would fund the two agencies for three years, through the rest of Trump’s term.
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Republicans are now trying to fund the two immigration enforcement agencies through the complicated, time-consuming process called budget reconciliation, a manoeuvre that they also used to pass president Donald Trump’s package of tax and spending cuts last year with no Democratic votes.
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Senate majority leader John Thune said:
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We have a multistep process ahead of us, but at the end Republicans will have helped ensure that America’s borders are secure and prevented Democrats from defunding these important agencies.
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The budget process only requires a simple majority in the Senate, bypassing filibuster rules that require Republicans to find 60 votes on most bills when they only hold 53 seats.
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The Senate held the first series of votes through a late night ‘vote-a-rama’ session, starting on Wednesday evening and into early Thursday morning.
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Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said:
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Instead of pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into ICE and Border Patrol, Republicans should be working with Democrats to lower out-of-pocket costs.
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The Senate adopted the final resolution 50-48, shortly after 3.30am ET.
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In other developments:
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The Pentagon announced, without explanation, that “Secretary of the Navy John C Phelan is departing the administration, effective immediately”. The head of the US navy, which is now enforcing a wartime blockade of Iranian ports, was replaced by a former Maga political candidate, Hung Cao, now acting secretary of the navy.
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The surprise announcement brought renewed attention to Cao’s 2023 comments that that “witchcraft” had “taken over” Monterey, California.
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Virginia’s attorney general, Jay Jones, promised to appeal an injunction issued by a circuit court judge that temporarily blocks the state from certifying the results of the Tuesday’s redistricting referendum.
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As jet fuel prices spike amid the ongoing energy crisis sparked by Donald Trump’s war on Iran, two Republican senators, Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton, denounced a proposed US government bailout of budget carrier Spirit Airlines.
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Representative David Scott, a Democrat from Georgia, has died at the age of 80. He is the fifth member of Congress to die in office within the last year.
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Key events
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Trump says he would not use a nuclear weapon against Iran
Donald Trump, apparently abandoning his attempt to frighten Iran’s leaders into negotiating by channeling Richard Nixon’s “madman theory, ruled out the use of nuclear weapons in the conflict with Iran in response to a reporter’s question on Thursday in the Oval Office.
Asked by a reporter during the event if his dark threats to end Iranian civilization meant that he would consider using a nuclear weapon, Trump said: “No.”
“No. We don’t need it. Why would I need it?” he continued before attacking the reporter for asking.
“Why would a stupid question like be asked?” Trump said.
“Why would I use a nuclear weapons when we’ve totally, in a very conventional way, decimated then without it?” the president added. “No, I wouldn’t use it. A nuclear weapon should never be allowed to be used by anybody.”
In the past, Trump has repeatedly expressed a horror of nuclear weapons, which he said stemmed from a warnings delivered by his uncle John, a longtime professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“My uncle used to tell me about nuclear before nuclear was nuclear,” Trump said during his 2016 campaign for the presidency.
“I hate nuclear more than any. My uncle was a professor was at MIT, used to tell me about nuclear,” Trump told Anderson Cooper during a CNN town hall event in 2016.
Trump boasts about 2019 speech in which he said US army ‘took over the airports’ in war of 1812
Donald Trump is now taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office, repeating his claims that the war in Iran is going well. He called a reporter who asked why the war is still going on “such a disgrace” and noted that the war had not yet lasted as long as the Vietnam war.
Minutes earlier, while showing off plans to renovate the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the president made the odd decision to remind the public that he once gave a speech at the site, in the same location where Martin Luther King Jr delivered his famed “I have a dream” speech. As he has for years, Trump argued that he attracted a larger crowd for his speech, at a Fourth of July celebration in 2019, than the civil rights leader did in 1963.
Trump’s decision to bring up his 2019 speech was unusual because the most famous part of that Trump address was when, badly misreading remarks on a rain-soaked teleprompter, he gave a wildly inaccurate account of US military history.
After claiming that the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary war was “named after” George Washington in 1775, he went on to say that, during the War of 1812: “Our army manned the ampert, it ranned the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do”.
Trump falsely said he had more people attend a 4 July event in Washington, DC years ago, than Martin Luther King Jr. during the 1963 March on Washington.
“I actually had more people, but that’s OK,” Trump said. “They gave him a million people,” adding the “fake news” media only said 25,000 people attended his event.
A woman and her child who had hearing loss are present at President Donald Trump’s White House press conference.
According to Trump and the woman, Regeneron’s new medication addressing hearing loss helped the two-year-old child recover his hearing.
“It’s life changing,” the mother said.
Trump also announced that the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new drug from Regeneron, the pharmaceutical company, called Otarmeni.
The drug is gene therapy for genetic hearing loss in both children and adults, the company announced.
“People are totally deaf,” Trump said. “And it’s amazing. I’ve seen some work on it, it’s actually hard to believe.”
Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. Oz chose the name for the TrumpRx website, where buyers can pay cash to purchase medication.
“I hear it’s setting records, actually,” Trump said during the White House press conference.
Regeneron also agreed to lower the price of one medication, Praluent, from $537 to $225 for people purchasing it via the TrumpRx.gov website, the president said.
The medication addresses cholesterol and heart disease complications.
Trump announces deal with pharmaceutical company to lower drug prices
Trump said that the deal with the pharmaceutical company Regeneron to lower drug prices is a huge accomplishment that should lead to midterm election success.
“By itself, we should win the midterms,” Trump said during the White House event.
“That should be front page news, but it won’t be,” Trump added.
President Donald Trump announced a drug price deal with pharmaceutical company Regeneron at the White House.
Regeneron “offered their prescription medications at heavily-discounted, ‘most favored nation’ prices”, the president announced.
The company is the last of 17 manufacturers that the administration has pressured to negotiate drug prices under their “most favored nation” policy. The other deals involved lowering the prices for certain drugs offered to Medicaid and to patients paying cash through the “TrumpRx” website.
Here’s a recap of the day so far
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Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, has released the text for an extension of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa). The language includes a three-year extension of the provision and some amendments. Notably, the new text released by Republicans does not include the need for a warrant to obtain communications, which had been a demand from several conservative hardliners and Democrats alike. The legislation will now head to the House rules committee, where it may face further right-wing opposition, before it can end up on the floor for a vote.
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The DoJ’s internal watchdog announced an investigation today into the department’s compliance with a law mandating the release of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s investigative files. The justice department’s office of inspector general, which operates independently, said it would “evaluate the DOJ’s processes for identifying, redacting, and releasing records in its possession as required by the act.”
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Donald Trump told the BBC that next week’s state visit from King Charles and Queen Camilla could “absolutely” repair US relations with the UK. This comes after a once cordial relationship with UK prime minister Keir Starmer has turned icy – following the latter’s unwillingness to support the US-Israel war in Iran. The president told the BBC that his relationship with Starmer would only “recover” if the prime minister changed course on immigration.
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The Trump administration has moved to reclassify marijuana, more than four months after Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the attorney general to move it from schedule I to schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act. The schedule I classification meant marijuana was alongside heroin, LSD, MDMA and synthetic opioids, whereas a schedule III classification put it in the same category as ketamine, anabolic steroids and testosterone.
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The president also has ordered the US Navy “to shoot and kill any boat” that is laying mines in the strait of Hormuz. On Truth Social, he also said that US minesweepers were working “at a tripled up level” to clear any mines from the waters.
Joseph Gedeon
Senator Ron Wyden, one of the Democrats leading the negotiations in the upper chamber for further changes to section 702, called the latest House Fisa bill a “rubber stamp for Trump and Kash Patel to spy on Americans without a warrant”.
The privacy concern at the hear of the Fisa extension provision are an exceedingly rare example of agreement between Democrats and ultra-conservative lawmakers on Capitol Hill. “Don’t fall for fake reforms,” Wyden added. “Instead of ending warrantless surveillance or creating more transparency about government spying, this bill only requires a few more Trump administration officials to check a box. That always leads to more abuses, not less.”
House Republicans releases text of surveillance law extension
Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, has released the text for an extension of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa).
The language includes a three-year extension of the provision and some amendments. These include a monthly FBI review of any US citizens included in collected communication by intelligence agencies, and an investigation by the department’s inspector general for a review of any civil liberties that may have been compromised.
A reminder that section 702, which is now set to expire on 30 April, allows national security agents to collect and review texts and emails sent to and from foreigners living outside the US without a warrant. If Americans are talking to a non-US target living abroad, there is potential for them to get swept up in the investigation.
Notably, the new text released by Republicans does not include the need for a warrant to obtain communications, which had been a demand from several conservative hardliners and Democrats alike.
The legislation will now head to the House rules committee, where it may face further right-wing opposition, before it can end up on the floor for a vote.
Donald Trump, for his part, has pushed GOP lawmakers to “UNIFY” and pass a “clean” Fisa extension, while baselessly claiming he’s been a victim of section 702’s privacy vulnerabilities.
Lutnick grilled on Capitol Hill over ties to Epstein
During a House appropriations committee hearing as part of Donald Trump’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year, Howard Lutnick was grilled about his relationship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Represenative Madeleine Dean, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, asked whether the president expressed “concerns” about the commerce secretary’s relationship with Epstein. Lutnick refused to comment.
A reminder, the commerce secretary was a longtime next-door neighbor of Epstein in New York. He has previously claimed that he distanced himself from Epstein in 2005.
However, the justice department’s release of case files showed that Lutnick had two engagements with Epstein years past that. He attended a 2011 event at Epstein’s home. And Lutnick’s family had lunch with Epstein on his private island in 2012 – four years after Epstein was sentenced to 13 months in jail for procuring a minor for prostitution.
Lutnick admitted to the 2012 lunch during his 10 February testimony before the Senate appropriations committee. “I did have lunch with him, as I was on a boat going across on a family vacation,” Lutnick said. In that testimony, Lutnick also insisted that he “barely had anything to do” with Epstein. CBS also reported that Lutnick and Epstein both appeared to have stakes in a now-shuttered advertising company, Adfin, as recently as 2014. Inclusion in the files does not imply wrongdoing.
However, during today’s hearing, the commerce secretary refused to answer Dean’s questions about whether he had any further business ties with Epstein beyond Adfin.
Dean noted that three female cabinet secretaries have been ousted from Trump’s White House: Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem and Lori Chavez-DeRemer. “If President Trump has even a shred of concern about accountability for Jeffrey Epstein’s enablers,” Dean said to Lutnick, “he would fire you too”.
As my colleague, Chris Stein, notes, Republican speaker Mike Johnson has said that if progress is made on the reconciliation bill, he will hold a vote on a separate measure, which the Senate approved last month with bipartisan support, to allocate funding for the rest of Department of Homeland Security’s operations exclusive of Immigration and Customs Enforcment (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). A reminder that these subagenices, including the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Coast Guard, and Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), have gone without federal funding for 10 weeks, as the record-breaking partial government shutdown continues.
“Sequencing is important. We have to make sure we don’t isolate and make an orphan out of key agencies of the department,” Johnson told reporters this week.
