‘We’ll give them everything,’ Trump says ahead of upcoming vote on Epstein files, adds that he doesn’t want it to ‘detract’ from Republican successes
In the Oval Office, the president said today that he would sign a bill to release the complete tranche of Epstein files if it ends up on his desk.
“All I want is, I want for people to recognize a great job that I’ve done on pricing, on affordability, because we brought prices way down,” Trump said. “I just don’t want Epstein to detract from the great success of the Republican Party, including the fact that the Democrats are totally blamed for the shutdown.”
He added:
We’ll give them everything. Sure. I would let them, let the Senate look at it, let anybody look at it, but don’t talk about it too much, because honestly, I don’t want to take it away from us. It’s really a Democrat problem. The Democrats were Epstein’s friends, all of them, and it’s a hoax.
Key events
Ro Khanna, California Democrat, says he expects Senate to ‘quickly’ pass his bill to release Epstein files
Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman from California, said in an interview with Pod Save America on Monday that he now expects his bill to compel the justice department to release all of its files on Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender, to be passed by the Senate soon after a House vote scheduled for Tuesday.
“I’ve been in touch with Merkley and Murkowski’s office in the Senate,” Khanna said, referring to Jeff Merkley, a Democratic senator from Oregon, and Lisa Murkowski, a Republican senator from Alaska. “They expect actually now that this will quickly go through the Senate, which would be enormous.”
Khanna, who joined a Republican colleague, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, to introduce a discharge petition to force a vote on the bill, said that the House will vote at 3:15 pm Eastern time on Tuesday. He added that Donald Trump, who could still veto the legislation if it passes both chambers, reversed course and called for House Republicans to support the measure only after 50 members of Trump’s party had signaled that they intended to vote for it.
Trump, of course, could simply order the justice department to release the files, as he suggested he would while running for office last year, before abruptly claiming this year that calls for full transparency on the federal case against his former friend were a purely partisan effort to damage him.
Texas governor delays special election to replace House Democrat until 31 January, leaving seat open for 11 months
The Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, announced on Monday that a special election run-off to replace Sylvester Turner, a Texas Democrat who died in March will not be held until the final day of January next year, meaning that the safe Democratic seat will have been vacant for at least 11 months.
Turner, who had undergone radiation treatment for cancer in 2022, served just two months of the term he was elected to in 2024 to represent Texas’ 18th Congressional District, based in Houston. The district was previously represented by Sheila Jackson Lee for two decades before she died of cancer in 2024.
Abbott was criticized for initially delaying the special election to replace Turner until 4 November. But the election went to a run-off, causing a further delay, because the top two vote-getters, Christian Menefee, the Harris County Attorney, and Amanda Edwards, a former Houston City Council member, fell well short of the 50% threshold in a 16-candidate eace.
Menefee and Edwards, both Democrats, will now face off in the 31 January election. Both are expected to then entry the Democratic primary in March to earn a spot on the ballot in November when the seat will be contested along redrawn lines in the midterms.
Oregon governor calls for full demobilization of national guard troops judge blocked Trump from deploying to Portland
Governor Tina Kotek of Oregon said in a statement on Monday that every member of the state’s national guard called into federal service by the Pentagon should be sent home to their families since a federal judge issued a permanent injunction calling Donald Trump’s deployment of troops to Portland illegal.
Kotek said that the 100 members of Oregon’s national guard remain mobilized in response to the president’s wildly false claims about a small anti-ICE protest in Portland.
According to the governor, all 200 California national guard troops sent to Oregon by the Pentagon are scheduled to return to their home state on Monday, and 100 members of Oregon’s national guard called into federal service in September have been demobilized by the US army’s Northern Command.
“President Trump’s disregard for the rule of law has real human consequences,” Kotek said in a statement. “Members of the Oregon National Guard, who are our friends and neighbors, have been away from their families and jobs for 50 days on an unnecessary deployment. With the holidays approaching, every single member deserves to go home.”
Maga Texas congressman flips from no to yes on release of Epstein files – report
Troy Nehls, a Texas Republican and Trump loyalist, who pledged three days ago that he would “be voting NO on the Epstein Hoax”, has reportedly had a change of heart, telling a New York Times reporter on Monday that he now intends to vote yes.
Nehls, a former sheriff, was sworn in for his first term as a congressman on 3 January 2021. Three days later, he was caught on video by a member of the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol telling a rioter through the battered door of the House chamber that he was “ashamed” of him.
Trump says that tariff checks will ‘probably come in the middle of next year’
The president has doubled down on his promise that the revenue raised from his sweeping tariffs will result in $2,000 checks for American families. “We’re going to be issuing dividends later on, some somewhere prior to probably in the middle of next year,” he said. “We have a lot of money from tariffs. If we didn’t have tariffs, this nation would be in serious trouble.”
This, despite the fact the president cannot unilaterally decide how tariff income will be spent. Federal law confers that power to Congress. Also, the supreme court is now deliberating the legality of the levies. Earlier this month, liberal and conservative justices alike seemed skeptical of the means and methods of the administration’s tariff policy.
While addressing reporters’ questions today on the Epstein vote, Trump appeared frustrated.
“Unfortunately, like with the Kennedy situation, with the Martin Luther King situation, not to put Jeffrey Epstein in the same category, but no matter what we give, it’s never enough,” the president said. “It’s just a Russia, Russia, Russia hoax as it pertains to the Republicans.”
Earlier, Trump repeated his intent to investigate prominent Democrats’ links to Epstein. “They were with him all the time. I wasn’t, I wasn’t at all,” he said today. A reminder, that US attorney for the southern district of New York, Jay Clayton, was assigned to lead the probe against these noted adversaries of the president, including Bill Clinton.
‘We’ll give them everything,’ Trump says ahead of upcoming vote on Epstein files, adds that he doesn’t want it to ‘detract’ from Republican successes
In the Oval Office, the president said today that he would sign a bill to release the complete tranche of Epstein files if it ends up on his desk.
“All I want is, I want for people to recognize a great job that I’ve done on pricing, on affordability, because we brought prices way down,” Trump said. “I just don’t want Epstein to detract from the great success of the Republican Party, including the fact that the Democrats are totally blamed for the shutdown.”
He added:
We’ll give them everything. Sure. I would let them, let the Senate look at it, let anybody look at it, but don’t talk about it too much, because honestly, I don’t want to take it away from us. It’s really a Democrat problem. The Democrats were Epstein’s friends, all of them, and it’s a hoax.
Speaking today, the president’s voice sounded notably raspy. He said that the hoarseness was the result of “shouting at people because they were stupid about something having to do with trade”.
“I blew my stack,” Trump added, before clarifying that one country in particular “wanted to try and renegotiate the terms of their trade deal”. However, he refused to name the country when pressed by a reporter.
President says he doesn’t ‘rule out anything’ on Venezuela amid military escalation
Donald Trump said he doesn’t “rule out anything” when asked about the possibility of troops on the ground in Venezuela.
“We just have to take care of Venezuela. They dumped hundreds of 1000s of people into our country from prisons,” the president added, while underscoring that Nicolás Maduro has done “done tremendous damage” to the US “primarily because of drugs”.
Donald Trump, joined by Fifa president Gianni Infantino, just touted the economic impact of the 2026 World Cup. “It’s expected to drive more than $30bn,” he said. “And it’s going to create nearly 200,000 jobs for America.”
He added that the games would remedy the effects of the “shutdown caused by Democrats”.
Trump says he will be ‘endorsing against’ Indiana Republicans who inhibit redistricting effort in the state
As the redistricting battle continues across several states, Donald Trump said that he will be “endorsing against” any Indiana lawmaker who “votes against the Republican Party, and our Nation, by not allowing for Redistricting for Congressional seats”.
This comes as the speaker in the Hoosier state’s senate president said that there weren’t enough votes to accomplish a mid-decade redistricting plan at the behest of Trump. For his part, Indiana GOP governor Mike Braun said that he “had a great call” with the president today, and urged state legislators to “show up for work and take a public vote for fair maps to counter the gerrymandering in California and Illinois”.
Braun added: “I told him [Trump] I remain committed to standing with him on the critical issue of passing fair maps in Indiana to ensure the MAGA agenda is successful in Congress.”
Warren calls for Harvard to sever ties with former university president Larry Summers, following Epstein emails
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has called for Harvard University to sever ties with its former president Larry Summers, in an interview with CNN. This comes as several emails between Summers and the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein appeared in the trove of documents released by the House oversight committee last week. The pair maintained a friendship for years.
“For decades, Larry Summers has demonstrated his attraction to serving the wealthy and well-connected, but his willingness to cozy up to a convicted sex offender demonstrates monumentally bad judgment,” Warren told CNN. “If he had so little ability to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein even after all that was publicly known about Epstein’s sex offenses involving underage girls, then Summers cannot be trusted to advise our nation’s politicians, policymakers, and institutions – or teach a generation of students at Harvard or anywhere else.”
Summers, who previously served as treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, is now the subject of a new investigation that Trump initiated last week. The president instructed attorney general Pam Bondi to launch a probe into several Democrats and institutions after their names appeared in the latest tranche of documents, which included emails that seemed to suggest Trump himself might have known about Epstein’s conduct.
In a short while, we’ll hear from Donald Trump, as he meets with the White House taskforce about the 2026 World Cup.
We’ll make sure to bring you the latest lines, as this will be the first chance reporters have to ask him questions since he seemed to pivot on House Republicans voting to release the full trove of justice department files on Jeffrey Epstein.
Acting head of Fema resigns following response to deadly Texas floods – report
David Richardson, the acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), has resigned after a brief stint leading the agency, according to the Washington Post.
The Post cites people familiar with the matter, and notes that Richardson “kept a low profile and was known for frequently being inaccessible, including during the early hours of the flood disaster in Texas over the Fourth of July weekend”.
The Trump administration has been vocal about wanting to dismantle Fema, and Richardson’s boss – homeland security secretary Kristi Noem – stopped him from doing interviews or answering other media requests, according to an official with knowledge of the situation who spoke on the Post condition of anonymity.
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