House committee releases tranche of Epstein records as White House fights petition to released all Epstein files
The Republican-led House oversight committee has released more than 33,000 pages of documents related to the federal investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender whose long friendship with Donald Trump has raised questions about what the president knew and when he knew it.
The records were posted online as the White House urged Republican lawmakers not to support a discharge petition from Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, and Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, which would force the release of all of the Epstein files.
Asked by Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, whether or not he supports the discharge petition, James Comer, the Republican chair of the committee, said on Tuesday that there was no need for that vote since the committee had now subpoenaed the records. The question of how many of those files were obtained by the committee, and how many will be released by the committee remains unanswered.
However, Massie told Axios on Tuesday that the selection of documents released by the committee would not stop him from trying to get a majority of House members to sign his petition to force a vote for the release of all of the files. “My staff has done a quick look at it and it looks like a bunch of redacted documents and nothing new, so it’s not going to suffice”, the congressman said.
The Massie and Khanna petition would require the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to publicly release all unclassified Epstein records in the possession of the justice department, including the FBI and US attorneys’ offices.
Massie and Khanna have scheduled a news conference with some of Epstein’s victims on Wednesday.
Reporters reviewing the files released by Comer’s committee agreed that so far, they appear to mostly contain information that was already publicly known.
Key events
Trump says US military killed 11 members of Tren de Aragua in international waters off Venezuela
In a post on his social network on Tuesday, Donald Trump wrote that the US military killed 11 members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua in a strike on a boat in international waters.
The post was illustrated by what appeared to be video of the strike, marked “unclassified”, which was quickly picked up and broadcast by the Colombian news network Noticias Caracol.
Trump’s post described the gang members as “terrorists” who were “transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States” at the time. He offered no evidence for that claim.
The president also described the gang as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization, operating under the control of Nicolas Maduro”, the president of Venezuela.
Although the Trump administration invoked the claim that Tren de Aragua is directed by Venezuela’s government to justify its use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport men it claims were members of the gang to a high-security prison in El Salvador earlier this year, the New York Times reported in March that a US intelligence community assessment concluded that the gang, Tren de Aragua, is not controlled by Maduro’s government.
Tom Phillips
The US military has conducted “a lethal strike” against an alleged “drug vessel” from Venezuela, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has announced amid growing tensions between Washington and Caracas.
Donald Trump trailed the announcement during an address at the White House on Tuesday afternoon, telling reporters the US had “just, over the last few minutes, literally shot out … a drug-carrying boat”.
“And there’s more where that came from. We have a lot of drugs pouring into our country,” the US president added. “We took it out,” he said of the boat.
Shortly after, Rubio offered further details of the incident on social media, tweeting that the military had “conducted a strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela and was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization”.
It was not immediately clear what kind of vessel had been targeted, or, crucially, if the incident had taken place inside the South American country’s territorial waters.
Chris Stein
John Thune, the Republican Senate majority leader, has warned Democrats that he may move to change the chamber’s rules around confirmations if they do not agree to more quickly approve Donald Trump’s nominees.
With the exception of secretary of state Marco Rubio, Democrats have forced time-consuming roll call votes on every single executive nominee Trump has made since taking office in January. Under previous administrations, including Joe Biden and Trump’s first term, senators from both parties agreed to confirm some nominees, typically for less controversial positions, by unanimous voice votes.
In a floor speech on Tuesday, Thune warned that he may go ahead with plans to change Senate rules to prevent the Democrats from forcing votes on every nominee.
“I’m here to tell my Democrat colleagues that their historic obstruction cannot continue”, he said, adding that 302 nominees were awaiting confirmation.
“If Democrats continue to obstruct, if they continue to drag out confirmation of every single one of the nominations of a duly elected president, if they continue to slow the Senate’s business to such a drastic degree, then we’re going to have to take steps to get this process back on a reasonable footing”.
Democrats have countered by arguing that Trump’s appointees are not qualified, and that they will not support a president who has tried to usurp Congress’s authorities on matters such as spending since taking office.
“Historically bad nominees deserve a historic level of scrutiny by Senate Democrats”, minority leader Chuck Schumer said last month.
Back in front of the cameras, Trump misleads on tariffs, viral video and judge’s ruling troops in LA broke the law
Following Donald Trump’s announcement that he is moving US Space Command headquarters from Colorado to Alabama, in part, he suggested, to punish Colorado for using vote-by-mail, the president took questions from reporters in the White House pool for the first time in a week. Several of his answers were false or misleading.
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Asked to comment on the federal appeals court ruling last week that most of his tariffs are illegal, Trump falsely claimed that the US has taken in trillions of dollars” because of the tariffs. Actual tariff revenue in 2025 is about $115bn, as the economist Justin Wolfers has pointed out, which has been paid by American importers, not, as Trump claims, other countries. The president said that the administration will be asking the supreme court to issue an expedited ruling to reverse the appeals court finding that he exceeded his authority under the 1977 International Economic Emergency Act by imposing tariffs without the consent of Congress.
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While dismissing rumors about his health, prompted by his sudden lack of public appearances, and a persistent bruise on his right hand that was again covered by makeup on Tuesday, Trump was shown video of a garbage bag being tossed out of an upper floor of the White House over the weekend and claimed that it must have been “AI-generated”, since, he said, the windows are too heavy to lift and “sealed”. But the White House has already acknowledged that the video was genuine and said that contractors had thrown the material out the window.
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On his deployment of troops in Los Angeles, Trump was asked to respond to the ruling from a federal judge in California on Tuesday that the use of troops to enforce the law was illegal and must stop. He bristled at the question, accusing the reporter who asked him of making “a statement”, and of leaving out what he said was an important detail. “The judge said that you can leave the 300 people that you already have in place. They can stay. They can remain. They can do what they have to do”, the president claimed.
In fact, Judge Charles Breyer ruled that the troops Trump ordered to Los Angeles had clearly violated the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, prohibiting the military from being used for law enforcement, and issued an injunction blocking them from carrying out any such activities from now on.
Referring to the Trump administration, the judge wrote: “at Defendants’ orders and contrary to Congress’s explicit instruction, federal troops executed the laws. The evidence at trial established that Defendants systematically used armed soldiers (whose identity was often obscured by protective armor) and military vehicles to set up protective perimeters and traffic blockades, engage in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrate a military presence in and around Los Angeles. In short, Defendants violated the Posse Comitatus Act.”
The 300 National Guard troops who remain stationed in Los Angeles, the judge wrote: “have already been improperly trained as to what activities they can and cannot engage in under the Posse Comitatus Act. Further, President Trump’s recent executive orders and public statements regarding the National Guard raise serious concerns as to whether he intends to order troops to violate the Posse Comitatus Act elsewhere in California.”
As a result, Breyer ordered, the administration is now “enjoined from deploying, ordering, instructing, training, or using the National Guard currently deployed in California, and any military troops heretofore deployed in California, to execute the laws, including but not limited to engaging in arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation, or acting as informants”.
No Kings mass protests set for 18 October
The coalition behind the “No Kings” rally have announced another mass protest set for 18 October.
The nationwide protest that turned out hundreds of thousands of people is rooted in Trump’s threats to send militarized forces into different American cities and his detention and encampment of immigrants, the organizers say.
“I would love to receive calls from governors and mayors saying they need help” Trump said about deploying national guard across the country while in the Oval Office. “We’ll help them, we have a lot of people, we have a great military force.”
Trump: ‘Would be honored’ to get a call from Illinois governor for national guard
Trump said “he would be honored” to take a call from Illinois governor JB Pritzker to send national guard to his state.
“I would love to have governor Pritzker call me”, Trump said. I’d gain respect for him and say we do have a problem, and we’d love to send in the troops, because you know what the people they have to be protected.”
Trump said because of the national guard roaming around DC, new restaurants will open up in the city.
“Washington DC is a safe zone right now, it’s a safe city” he said. “This took place in 12 days, now it’s 15 days, but three days ago it became what’s known as a safe zone”.
“We took 1,600 people out,” Trump said.
Pool reporters asked Trump about the latest on Russia-Ukraine talks, and the president shared that both countries had 7,313 soldiers killed over the last week. “For no reason whatsover” Trump said.
The president didn’t comment on a potential meeting between Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Canada wants in on Golden Dome, Trump says
Speaking about the newly relocated Space Command in Huntsville, Alabama, Trump shared the latest on an ambitious missile defense system he dubbed the “golden dome”.
The “golden dome” is Trump’s gold-plated take on Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, though his version would apparently be so impressive that “everybody wants to be a participant in it.”
Canada, according to Trump, has already come calling.
“Canada called they want to be a part of it, and that’ll be great”, he said. “Canada wants very much to be included in that. Then we’re going to work something out with them.”
Trump also took a parting swipe at Colorado, which was hosting Space Command as a temporary headquarters.
“I want to thank Colorado. The problem I have with Colorado, one of the big problems, they do mail in voting. They went to all mail in voting. So they have automatically, crooked elections.”
Trump says the Space Command relocation promises 30,000 jobs and economic investment that Trump inflated in real-time from “hundreds of millions” to “billions and billions of dollars” because, as he explained, “it can’t be millions”.
Trump justified the move by saying it would help America “defend and dominate the high frontier as they call it”.
Trump announces Space Command will move from Colorado to Alabama
Donald Trump announced that US Space Command headquarters will officially move from Colorado to Huntsville, Alabama.
The president declared Huntsville would “forever be known from this point forward as Rocket City” – apparently unaware the Alabama city has held that title since the 1950s thanks to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.
Trump couldn’t resist linking the decision to his electoral performance. “I only won it by about 47 points,” he said about Tennessee, before adding: “I don’t think that influenced my decision, though, right?”
Republican senator Joni Ernst won’t run for re-election
Two-term Iowa Republican senator Joni Ernst has decided to officially bow out of a re-election bid.
“After a tremendous amount of prayer and reflection, I will not be seeking re-election in 2026”, Ernst said in a video announcement.
Ernst is the first woman combat veteran to serve in the Senate, where Republicans hold a narrow 53-47 majority.
Trump team’s contentious climate report ‘makes a mockery of science’, experts say
Oliver Milman
A group of the US’s leading climate scientists have compiled a withering review of a controversial Trump administration report that downplays the risks of the climate crisis, finding that the document is biased, riddled with errors and fails basic scientific credibility.
More than 85 climate experts have contributed to a comprehensive 434-page report that excoriates a US Department of Energy (DOE) document written by five hand-picked fringe researchers that argues that global heating and its resulting consequences have been overstated.
The Trump administration report, released in July, contains “pervasive problems with misrepresentation and selective citation of the scientific literature, cherry-picking of data, and faulty or absent statistics”, states the new analysis, which is written in the style of the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.
“This report makes a mockery of science,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University.
“It relies on ideas that were rejected long ago, supported by misrepresentations of the body of scientific knowledge, omissions of important facts, arm waving, anecdotes and confirmation bias. This report makes it clear DOE has no interest in engaging with the scientific community.”
Amy Coney Barrett defends US abortion ruling in memoir
Richard Luscombe
Amy Coney Barrett, the conservative supreme court justice whose controversial fast-track confirmation at the end of Donald Trump’s first presidency led directly to the panel’s vote to strike down abortion rights nationally, has expressed in a new memoir her belief that the ruling “respected the choice” of the American people.
Barrett was paid a $2m advance for her book Listening to the Law, according to CNN, which obtained a copy and published brief extracts on Tuesday, a week before its 9 September publication.
“[T]he court’s role is to respect the choices that the people have agreed upon, not to tell them what they should agree to,” Barrett writes, according to CNN. The outlet framed Barrett’s comment as reflecting her belief that her predecessors’ 7-2 vote in Roe v Wade had “usurped the will of the American people”.
Rudy Giuliani’s hospital discharge comes a day after Donald Trump said he will award him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Associated Press reported.
The decision places the award on a man once lauded for leading New York after the September 11, 2001, attacks and later sanctioned by courts and disbarred for amplifying false claims about the 2020 US presidential election. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, was also criminally charged in two states; he has denied wrongdoing.
Trump on his Truth Social platform called Giuliani the “greatest Mayor in the history of New York City, and an equally great American Patriot”.
Rudy Giuliani has been discharged from the hospital and is “progressing well” following a car collision in New Hampshire on Saturday, his spokesperson Ted Goodman said.
“The mayor would like to thank the New Hampshire State Police, paramedics, Elliot Hospital, and all the physicians and nurses who provided incredible care” Goodman added.
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