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The GOP-controlled House is cutting short its last workweek before the summer recess because of a fight on Capitol Hill over the release of the government’s files on the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The House was scheduled to hold votes on Thursday before lawmakers departed for their lengthy, five-week recess.
But Republican leaders informed rank-and-file lawmakers today that the final vote of the week would now be a day earlier, tomorrow afternoon. The shift in schedule occurred because of a standoff on the Rules Committee, which decides how legislation comes to the floor, but has been ground to a halt by the Epstein issue.
Read the full story here.
As experts and historians spent the night sifting through the 230,000 pages of documents released yesterday related to the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., there doesn’t seem to be any blockbuster revelations so far.
The documents do not appear to contain FBI wiretap transcripts or much other sensitive information on King’s personal life.
A federal judge had previously denied a DOJ request to include the wiretaps, and ruled that only documents related to the assassination should be included in the release.
The remainder of the files will now stay under court seal until 2027.
Under the direction of then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI wiretaps and surveillance were an effort to discredit King and expose details of his personal life, including extramarital affairs.
But according to experts, the release, which came unexpectedly yesterday, shed little new information on King’s death and the circumstances surrounding his assassination.
Some pages were very faint after this much time, making them hard to read. The release included many letters regarding congressional investigations, outside commissions and accounts of the investigation and manhunt for King’s killer James Earl Ray. But nothing seemed to change the basic outline of Ray’s involvement in the assassination.
A House Oversight subcommittee has approved a motion to direct the full committee chairman, James Comer, R-Ky., to issue a subpoena for Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
The motion was offered by Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., during a hearing of the Subcommittee on Government Operations; the motion passed by a voice vote, with only four members — three Republicans and one Democrat — present.
An Oversight Committee spokesperson told NBC News that the committee will subpoena Maxwell “as expeditiously as possible.” The spokesperson also said Comer directed Burchett to make the motion “allowing the Committee to formally consider whether to proceed.”
While the House is leaving for August recess this week, committee work can continue over the break.
Earlier this morning, Attorney General Pam Bondi said her deputy, Todd Blanche, would will meet with Maxwell in the next several days. Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking in 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
The Pentagon last week announced multimillion-dollar contracts with four artificial intelligence companies intended to “address critical national security challenges,” including Anthropic, Google and OpenAI.
But the fourth raised questions among artificial intelligence experts: Elon Musk’s xAI.
Now, a former Pentagon employee who worked on the early stages of the AI initiative told NBC News that including xAI was a late-in-the-game addition under the Trump administration.
Read the full story here.
A federal appeals court is allowing the Trump administration to end temporary protected status for more than 11,000 people from Afghanistan and Cameroon while appeals are underway.
A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said there is “insufficient evidence to warrant the extraordinary remedy of a postponement of agency action pending appeal.”
Last week, the appeals court temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ending the protected status for Afghans and Cameroonians, which has prevented them from being deported, while it considered the issue more fully.
Temporary protected status, which is granted to people from countries embroiled in armed conflict or suffering from environmental disasters, ended for Afghans last week and Aug. 4 for Cameroonians.
The United States announced today that it will again pull out of the U.N.’s educational, scientific and cultural agency because of what Washington sees as its anti-Israel bias, only two years after rejoining.
“President Trump has decided to withdraw the United States from UNESCO — which supports woke, divisive cultural and social causes that are totally out-of-step with the commonsense policies that Americans voted for in November,” White House deputy spokesperson Anna Kelly told the New York Post. UNESCO and the White House did not immediately confirm the U.S. move.
Read the full story here.
The Trump administration releases thousands of records on Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination against the wishes of the King family. NBC News Justice Reporter Ryan Reilly discusses the Justice Department’s decision to release files and possibly divert attention from the Jeffrey Epstein case.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that he has reached out to Ghislaine Maxwell’s legal team and wants to meet with her soon.
“For the first time, the Department of Justice is reaching out to Ghislaine Maxwell to ask: what do you know?” Blanche said in a post on X. “At @AGPamBondi’s direction, I’ve contacted her counsel. I intend to meet with her soon. No one is above the law — and no lead is off-limits.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi also posted a statement from Blanche, reaffirming the Justice Department and FBI’s conclusion from earlier this month that “no evidence was uncovered that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”
“President Trump has told us to release all credible evidence,” the statement from Blanche read. “If Ghislane Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say.”
Reached for comment, Maxwell’s lawyer, David Oscar Markus, confirmed that his team is “in discussions with the government and that Ghislaine will always testify truthfully.”
“We are grateful to President Trump for his commitment to uncovering the truth in this case,” Markus continued.
Maxwell was convicted of federal sex trafficking charges in 2021, and she is currently serving a 20–year prison sentence. She had been accused of grooming girls for Epstein’s sexual abuse.
Read the full story here.
Andrew Cuomo framed himself as Trump’s foil during the Democratic mayoral primary in New York City, adamant that his past record standing up to Trump as governor positioned him as the party’s best choice to defend the city during Trump’s second term.
But as the former governor reboots his campaign for a third-party general election bid, after losing the Democratic primary to state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, Trump is taking a back seat.
Read the full story here.
Trump’s intelligence chiefs are conducting a systematic campaign to rewrite the history of the 2016 election, seeking to reverse an eight-year-old assessment that Russia waged an information war to boost Trump’s candidacy.
National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe have cited declassified emails to allege in social media posts and television appearances that Obama administration officials manipulated intelligence and conspired to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s electoral victory in 2016.
But a bipartisan Senate investigation in 2020 and a recent CIA review both found that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, launching a disinformation campaign designed to damage Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.
Read the full story here.
Trump will host Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. at the White House today.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said yesterday that the two leaders could discuss trade and the upcoming Aug. 1 tariff deadline.
“Perhaps this will be a topic of discussion,” Leavitt said. “You will all see for yourselves in the Oval Office, as you always do. But the Aug. 1 deadline is just the, really the start date for when the United States of America will begin collecting this revenue from all of the countries around the world who the president has sent these letters to.”
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Live updates: House committee to subpoena Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell; Trump hosts Philippine president – NBC News
