Trump sues Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch over reporting on Epstein ties

The lawsuit over The Wall Street Journal’s reporting on a letter the newspaper says bore Trump’s name and was included in a birthday album for Epstein accuses the paper and its reporters of having “knowingly and recklessly” published “numerous false, defamatory, and disparaging statements.”

On Friday, Trump posted on his Truth Social site: “This lawsuit is filed not only on behalf of your favorite President, ME, but also in order to continue standing up for ALL Americans who will no longer tolerate the abusive wrongdoings of the Fake News Media.”

A spokesperson for Dow Jones, the Journal’s publisher, responded, “We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit.”

Both ABC and CBS have previously reached multimillion-dollar settlement deals with the president after he took them to court.

Trump heaped praise on the lawmakers at a White House dinner, telling them that no one has done what they’ve been able to accomplish, “and we did it all in six months.”

He ticked through legislation he has signed into law and said the Republican Party will have an “incredible record” to share with voters over the next 18 months.

“As long as we continue to keep our promises to the voters, Americans will continue to stand by our side and into 2026, the Republican majority, I think, is going to be stronger in both the House and the Senate,” he said.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Miami on Friday. It seeks at least $10 billion in damages.

Trump promised a lawsuit after The Wall Street Journal on Thursday described a sexually suggestive letter that the newspaper says bore Trump’s name and was included in a 2003 album for Epstein’s 50th birthday. Trump has denied writing the letter, calling the story “false, malicious, and defamatory.”

The letter was reportedly collected by disgraced British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell years before the wealthy financier was first arrested in 2006 and subsequently had a falling-out with Trump.

The Wall Street Journal describes the contents of the letter but did not publish a photo showing it entirely or provide details on how it came to learn about it.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says Camp Atterbury in Indiana and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey can temporarily house detained immigrants without affecting military readiness.

He notified members of Congress from both states this week of the proposal.

Trump has moved to aggressively detain and deport people in the country illegally, a push that has swept up large numbers of immigrants, including many with no prior criminal records, and forced federal authorities to find places to house them.

Hegseth said the presence of the detainees wouldn’t negatively affect the bases’ operations or training. Officials haven’t said when detainees could begin arriving at the facilities or if other military bases are under consideration.

The transcripts could include witness testimony and other evidence presented by prosecutors during court proceedings. They are rarely released, unless they need to be disclosed in connection with a judicial proceeding.

The Justice Department says it will work with prosecutors in New York to make appropriate redactions of victim-related information and other personally identifying information before transcripts are released.

Even with the department’s endorsement, it could take weeks or months of legal wrangling to decide what can be released and how to protect witnesses and other sensitive victim information.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche filed the motion urging the court to release the transcripts a day after President Trump directed the Justice Department to do so.

The Trump administration has been embroiled in controversy since the department last week announced it would not be releasing any more evidence in its possession from the Epstein investigation.

Trump’s demand to release the grand jury transcripts came after The Wall Street Journal reported on a sexually suggestive letter that the newspaper says bore Trump’s name and was included in a 2003 album for Epstein’s 50th birthday.

Trump denied writing the letter, calling it “false, malicious, and defamatory.”

The Environmental Protection Agency said Friday it is eliminating its research and development arm and reducing agency staff by thousands of employees.

The Office of Research and Development has long provided the scientific underpinnings for EPA’s mission to protect the environment and human health. The agency said Friday it is creating a new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions that will allow it focus on research and science “more than ever before.″

EPA is eliminating thousands of jobs after a series of voluntary retirements, buyouts and other departures in recent months. Total staffing will go down to 12,448, a nearly 23% reduction from January when President Trump took office.

Venezuela has released 10 jailed Americans in exchange for getting home scores of migrants deported by the United States to El Salvador months ago under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

The arrangement Friday represents a diplomatic achievement for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, helps President Donald Trump in his goal of bringing home Americans jailed abroad and lands El Salvador a swap that its president had proposed months ago.

“Every wrongfully detained American in Venezuela is now free and back in our homeland,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has dismissed claims that U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities failed to destroy their targets.

Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon ahead of a meeting with Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, Hegseth said the three nuclear sites were “obliterated” by the strikes.

“The more we report and the more we see, the more we understand how devastating those attacks were on all three of those nuclear sites,” Hegseth said.

A preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment said Iran’s nuclear program was set back only a few months after American strikes on three sites in June. But Trump and other top national security officials have disputed that conclusion, with Trump saying the sites were “completely and fully obliterated.”

Trump said the new law means the future of crypto and the crypto industry “is going to be stronger and bigger and better than ever before.”

Numerous members of Congress joined him at the White House for the event.

“We’ll sign this and get onto the next battle,” he said.

The president lavished praise on crypto leaders during his speech, saying “nobody has gained the respect in such a short period of time.”

Speaking of the industry, Trump said, “It’s good for the dollar and it’s good for the country. That’s why I backed you at an early stage.”

Then the president made a candid admission about the political calculus — “And I also did it for the votes,” he said, drawing laughter from the audience.

Trump opened the bill-signing ceremony by joking that one of the bills was named after him.

“The GENIUS Act, they named it after me,” he said at the White House.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority says the Federal Railroad Administration made an abrupt decision to end the funding agreements. The federal government should have collaborated with the authority to address concerns over the long-delayed project, the suit alleges.

The project’s price tag exceeds $100 billion, more than triple its estimated cost in 2008, when voters approved a bond to help pay for it.

The Trump administration announced its final decision to pull the funds earlier this week. Authority CEO Ian Choudri called the move illegal.

“This is no time for Washington to walk away on America’s transportation future,” he said in a statement.

But U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the authority had proven it could not build the bullet train on time or on budget.

“It’s time for this boondoggle to die,” he said earlier this week. “President Trump and I will always fight to ensure your tax dollars only go to projects that accomplish great, big, beautiful things.”

The U.S. Transportation Department and Federal Railroad Administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

The president is hosting Republican senators at the White House for a dinner Friday night to celebrate the recent passage of the party’s massive tax-and-border bill.

The purpose of the dinner, noted on Trump’s daily schedule, was confirmed by two people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a private gathering.

The White House declined to comment.

The Education Department will release some previously withheld grant money for after-school programs, days after 10 Republican senators sent a letter imploring the Office of Management and Budget to allow the funds to be sent to states.

President Donald Trump’s administration on July 1 withheld more than $6 billion in federal grants for after-school and summer programs, adult literacy and English language instruction, as part of a review to ensure spending aligned with the White House’s priorities. About $1.3 billion of that funding supported after-school programming for children.

In a letter sent Wednesday, Republican senators said the withheld money supported programs that had longstanding bipartisan support and were critical to local communities.

“We share your concern about taxpayer money going to fund radical left-wing programs,” the senators wrote. “However, we do not believe that is happening with these funds.”

▶ Read more about frozen funds

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says it has dismissed about 70 contractors from foreign countries such as China following a national security review.

“The individuals working on these contracts from countries of concern will no longer be able to work on USDA projects,” the department said.

The announcement came more than a month after Sen. Tom Cotton, R.-Arkansas, introduced a bill seeking to ban federal funding for laboratories or research centers that have nationals from China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, or North Korea working on agricultural research.

Patrick McCann, press secretary for Cotton, said the senator believes that “nationals from adversarial nations like Communist China have no business working for our nation’s federal agencies.”

“This is especially true when it comes to our food supply chain and national defense,” McCann wrote in an email.

Sen. Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, today wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth requesting information about any contractors that employee people in China to perform services for U.S. defense systems.

CBS said “Late Show” was canceled for financial reasons, not for content. But there’s no ignoring Colbert’s relentless criticism of Trump and his denunciation of the $16 million settlement offered to Trump while the parent company’s sale awaits federal approval, said Bill Carter, author of “The Late Shift.”

“If CBS thinks people are just going to swallow this, they’re really deluded,” Carter said.

“They’re trying to silence people, but that won’t work. Won’t work. We will just get louder,” actor Jamie Lee Curtis, who has previously criticized Trump and is set to visit Colbert’s show in coming days, told the AP.

“The House Republicans are for transparency, and they’re looking for a way to say that they agree with the White House. We agree with the president. Everything he said about that, all the credible evidence should come out,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said as demands to release sex-trafficking case files threatened to derail the recission vote.

Democrats vehemently decried the GOP resolution’s lack of force and pushed their own legislation, with support from nine Republicans, that would require the Justice Department to release more information on the case.

Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern called the Republican resolution “a fig leaf so they can move on from this issue.”

Under pressure from his own GOP members, Johnson had to demonstrate action on the Epstein files or risk having Republicans support the Democratic measures that would force the release of nearly all documents.

▶ Read more about Trump, the House and the Epstein files

The president applauded CBS’ decision to end “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” next May.

“I absolutely love that Colbert’ got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings,” the longtime target of Colbert’s comedy and criticism posted on Truth Social.

Colbert has led the late-night network competition for years. CBS has said “Late Show” was canceled for financial reasons, not for its content. But the timing — three days after Colbert criticized a legal settlement between Trump and Paramount Global as the CBS parent company seeks approval for a merger — led two U.S. senators to publicly question the motives of the cancellation.

Trump’s post also took shots at late-night hosts on ABC and NBC, and declared that Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld “is better than all of them combined.”

Annie Tomasini, a former Biden White House deputy chief of staff, cited her Fifth Amendment rights in declining to answer questions from the House Oversight committee.

Tomasini was subpoenaed by House Republicans to testify about Biden’s age, alleged cognitive decline and the use of the autopen for executive orders, pardons and the signing of laws in the previous administration.

Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., vowed to press on. The committee has scheduled interviews with nine more former Biden administration officials in the coming weeks, and hasn’t ruled out requesting that members of Biden’s family or Vice President Kamala Harris appear to answer questions.

Trump has looked to the marble finishes in a $2.5 billion renovation of the Federal Reserve headquarters to claim grounds to fire Chair Jerome Powell, with whom he has tussled for years over interest rates. But all that marble followed pressure from Trump appointees.

As the Fed moved forward with plans to renovate its Great Depression-era headquarters in Washington during Trump’s first term, its architects said the central bank had wanted glass walls to reflect the Fed as a transparent institution. Three Trump appointees called for more “white Georgia marble” instead.

Russ Vought, Trump’s top budget adviser, cited “premium marble” in a letter to Powell last week as an example of the “ostentatious overhaul.” Powell responded late Thursday that “new domestic marble” would be used to address concerns.

▶ Read more about the Fed headquarters renovation

Republican elected officials are promoting their recently passed tax and spending bill as a win for working Americans, but a new survey shows that Americans broadly see it as a win for the wealthy.

About two-thirds of U.S. adults expect it will help the rich, according to the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. About 6 in 10 think it will do more to hurt than help low-income people, and about half say it will do more harm than good for middle-class people and people like them.

Republicans advertisements frame the legislation as a tax cut for all Americans. Democrats make the case that the wealthiest will benefit as Medicaid and food assistance programs are cut.

Trump’s approval rating on government spending has fallen, suggesting disapproval of how the law adds billions to the deficit.

▶ Read more about the results of the AP-NORC poll on Trump’s tax and budget bill.

Trump threatened on social media to sue the Wall Street Journal and its owners, News Corp, after the paper reported on his alleged involvement with a 50th birthday gift to Jeffrey Epstein.

The newspaper said it had reviewed a typewritten letter bearing Trump’s signature, framed by the seemingly hand-drawn outline of a naked woman, that Ghislaine Maxwell included in a 2003 birthday album. Trump denied writing the letter or drawing the picture, calling it “false, malicious, and defamatory.”

Trump specifically went after its billionaire owner, Rupert Murdoch, who also owns the Fox Corporation that controls Fox News.

“I look forward to getting Rupert Murdoch to testify in my lawsuit against him and his ‘pile of garbage’ newspaper, the WSJ,” Trump said on Truth Social. “That will be an interesting experience!!!”

▶ Read more about the alleged Trump birthday note to Epstein

The bill is meant to create a regulatory framework for stablecoins.

“Big signing at 2:30 in the White House,” Trump said on Truth Social. “Congratulations to our GREAT REPUBLICANS for being able to accomplish so much, a record, in so short a period of time.”

The House passed the bill, named the GENIUS Act, on Thursday.

▶ Read more about what this legislation does.

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton is seeking an investigation into the hiring practices of Department of Defense contractors to see if they have hired Chinese citizens to perform sensitive tech work.

The Arkansas Republican wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday requesting information about any contractors that employee people in China to perform services for U.S. defense systems. Hiring employees living in China could unwittingly put sensitive systems and information at risk of Chinese espionage, Cotton wrote.

“The U.S. government recognizes that China’s cyber capabilities pose one of the most aggressive and dangerous threats to the United States, as evidenced by infiltration of our critical infrastructure, telecommunications networks, and supply chains,” Cotton wrote.

Cotton’s request comes after national security officials have linked China’s government to hacking campaigns targeting prominent Americans and critical U.S. systems.

If one theme has emerged in Trump’s second term, it’s how he’s leveraged presidential power for personal gain unlike anyone before in history.

From crypto coins to bibles, overseas development deals to an upcoming line of cellphones, Trump family businesses have raked in hundreds of millions of dollars since his election, an unprecedented flood of often shadowy money from billionaires, foreign governments and cryptocurrency tycoons with interests before the federal government.

The dealmaking is a rejection of Trump’s first-term pledge to “drain the swamp.”

“It’s the Mount Everest of corruption” said Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat.

▶ Read more about the AP’s reporting on Trump’s business deals.

The final House vote early Friday approving Trump’s request to claw back billions in congressionally approved spending came after hours of debate over a response to the administration’s handling of records in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case. The GOP ultimately settled on a resolution that nods to the backlash from the Republican base but carries no legal weight.

With Trump now dismissing the entire Epstein story as a “hoax” spread in part by “stupid Republicans,” the House resolution demonstrates that practically no one is moving on from Attorney General Pam Bondi’s promises to publicly release the case files.

The Trump administration insists it hasn’t wavered in its duty to protect the civil rights of America’s children even as it dismantles the Education Department. Yet its own data shows the agency has resolved far fewer civil rights cases than in past years despite families filing more complaints.

The Education Department’s civil rights branch lost nearly half its staff amid mass layoffs in March, raising questions about its ability to address a deep backlog of complaints from students alleging discrimination based on disability, sex or race. Pressed on the issue in June, Education Secretary Linda McMahon denied a slowdown.

By several measures, however, the output of the Office for Civil Rights appears to have fallen sharply in comparison with previous years. A public database of the office’s resolution agreements — cases in which schools or universities voluntarily agreed to address civil rights concerns — suggests the office’s work has slowed.

▶ Read more about the findings

• 1:30 p.m. ET, Trump will participate in a swearing-in ceremony for the IRS commissioner.
• 2:30 p.m., Trump will sign the GENIUS Act stablecoin bill into law.
• 7 p.m., he will have dinner with Republican senators.

Republicans who approved Trump’s request to claw back about $9 billion in congressionally approved spending praised the early Friday vote as a strong move to eliminate government bloat.

“We need to get back to fiscal sanity and this is an important step,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.

Opponents voiced concerns about Congress ceding its spending powers to the executive branch. These cuts are just a sliver of federal spending and come after Republicans also muscled through Trump’s tax and spending cut bill without any Democratic support. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that measure will increase the U.S. debt by about $3.3 trillion over the coming decade.

“No one is buying the the notion that Republicans are actually trying to improve wasteful spending,” said Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Among the foreign aid cuts are $800 million for a program that provides emergency shelter, water and family reunification for refugees and $496 million to provide food, water and health care for countries hit by natural disasters and conflicts. There also is a $4.15 billion cut for programs that aim to boost economies and democratic institutions in developing nations.

Democrats argued that the Republican administration’s animus toward foreign aid programs would hurt America’s standing in the world and create a vacuum for China to fill.

The White House argued that many of the cuts would incentivize other nations to step up and do more to respond to humanitarian crises and that the rescissions best served the American taxpayer.

▶ Read more about the cuts to foreign aid

The cancellation of $1.1 billion for the CPB represents the full amount it is due to receive during the next two budget years.

The White House says the public media system is politically biased and an unnecessary expense.

The corporation distributes more than two-thirds of the money to more than 1,500 locally operated public television and radio stations, with much of the remainder assigned to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service to support national programming.

Lawmakers with large rural constituencies voiced particular concern about what the cuts to public broadcasting could mean for some local public stations in their state.

▶ Read more about the House vote on the recissions

The package cancels about $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and nearly $8 billion for a variety of foreign aid programs, many designed to help countries where drought, disease and political unrest endure.

The vote marked the first time in decades that a president has successfully submitted such a rescissions request to Congress, and the White House suggested it won’t be the last. Some Republicans were uncomfortable with the cuts, yet supported them anyway, wary of crossing Trump or upsetting his agenda.

The House passed the bill by a vote of 216-213. It now goes to Trump for his signature.

▶ Read more about the House vote and the recissions request