
Speaker Mike Johnson Called Our Donald Trump Over The Epstein Files
🔥 Full coverage and conversation on Politics
After standing by President Donald Trump on everything from deploying Marines to quell protests to ramping up deportations, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is finally breaking with him... over the Jeffrey Epstein files.
In an interview with conservative podcaster Benny Johnson on Tuesday, the speaker called for 'transparency' regarding the Epstein investigation, adding that 'we should put everything out there and let the people decide it.'
His statements come over a week after the Justice Department and FBI said they wouldn't be releasing any additional files about Epstein after concluding that there wasn't evidence the disgraced financier kept a so-called 'client list' to blackmail influential figures or that he had died by means other than suicide.
In a post this past weekend, Trump doubled down on this stance, defending Attorney General Pam Bondi and calling for his followers to move on. On Tuesday, he softened his position somewhat, stating that Bondi should 'release whatever she thinks is credible.'
Johnson, who also stated that he trusts Trump, has 'never broken so publicly with the president on an issue,' writes the Washington Post's Marianna Sotomayor.
'I agree with the sentiment that we need to put it out here,' Johnson said, noting that Bondi should explain what she meant when she once referenced having the Epstein client list on her desk. 'She needs to come forward and explain that to everybody,' Johnson said. (White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has said that Bondi was referencing the 'entirety of all the paperwork' related to the Epstein case.)
The speaker's position points to blowback Trump and his administration have received from his base over the handling of the Epstein files, and highlights how Republican lawmakers are trying to acknowledge the uproar while still backing the president.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) on Tuesday called for the appointment of a special counsel to uncover the 'truth about the Epstein Files,' tagging former Rep. Matt Gaetz, who previously resigned from Congress as the House was investigating allegations of sexual misconduct against him.
Johnson and other House Republicans were also widely criticized Tuesday for claiming to want transparency about the Epstein files, but stymying a Democratic effort to push for their release.
On Tuesday, Republicans blocked a vote on a measure from Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), which would have forced the release of documents related to the DOJ's Epstein investigation.
'Republicans spent years screaming for the Epstein Files to be released. Now Donald Trump wants to hide them. Today, every R can vote to release the files. Will they give the American people transparency or block the truth to protect Trump?' Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) wrote on X.
— Daniel Goldman (@danielsgoldman) July 15, 2025
@danielsgoldman/X / Via Twitter: @danielsgoldman
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Boston Globe
3 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Trump caps his Scottish visit by opening a new golf course
Advertisement Trump used his trip to meet with Starmer and reach a trade framework for tariffs between the U.S. and the European Union's 27 member countries — though scores of key details remain to be hammered out. The overseas jaunt let Trump escape Washington's sweaty summer humidity but also the still-raging scandal over the files related to Jeffrey Epstein. But it was mostly built around golf — and walking the new course before it officially begins selling rounds to the public on Aug. 13, adding to a lengthy list of ways Trump has used the White House to promote his brand. Trump's assets are in a trust, and his sons are running the family business while he's in the White House. But any business generated at the course will ultimately enrich the president when he leaves office. Advertisement The new golf course will be the third owned by the Trump Organization in Scotland. Trump bought Turnberry in 2014 and owns another course near Aberdeen that opened in 2012. Trump golfed on Saturday as protesters took to the streets, and on Sunday. He invited Starmer, who famously doesn't golf, aboard Air Force One so the prime minister could get a private tour of his Aberdeen property before Tuesday's ceremonial opening. 'Even if you play badly, it's still good,' Trump said of golfing on his course over the weekend. 'If you had a bad day on the golf course, it's OK. It's better than other days.' Trump even found time at Turnberry to praise its renovated ballroom, which he said he'd paid lavishly to upgrade — even suggesting that he might install one like it at the White House. 'I could take this one, drop it right down there,' Trump joked. 'And it would be beautiful.'


CNN
5 minutes ago
- CNN
Analysis: Gaza and Ukraine will show whether Trump is a true leader or just a bully
Donald Trump The Middle East European Union UKFacebookTweetLink Follow Donald Trump looked like the last king of Scotland. To the skirl of bagpipes, the president welcomed Keir Starmer to one of his Scottish golfing palaces in his mother's ancestral homeland. The prime minister flew in Monday as a guest and a supplicant in a corner of his own United Kingdom. Starmer was a mere extra as Trump held court in a mind-bending news conference that rollicked through topics like his hatred of wind power, the window frames in his ballroom and Windsor Castle. Trump capped his protocol-reversing day by flying the PM across Scotland on Air Force One to another of his exclusive clubs, in another ostentatious show of US power optics. A day earlier, the top EU official, Ursula von der Leyen, matched Starmer's effusiveness after arriving at Trump's windswept Turnberry links for an audience bearing a trade deal that some Europeans blasted as a surrender. Events in America's new temporary capital in southwest Scotland were an object lesson in how Trump flexes his indomitable personality and relentless sense of others' weaknesses to impose personal power and rack up big wins for himself. Six months into his second presidency, Trump is getting exactly what he wants on many fronts. He's destroying the global free trading system by lining up framework trade deals that enshrine one of his longtime obsessions — tariffs. He sent US stealth bombers around the world to bombard Iran's nuclear program. And he's wrung promises of a vast increase in military spending from NATO members. It's the same at home. Trump has bullied Congress into submission. He's imposing his ideology on great universities. He's forced private law firms to do pro bono work for him and he's weaponizing the justice system against his foes. And he's effectively shut down the southern border and halted undocumented migration. This is the kind of 'winning' that eluded him in his first term and that he promised his MAGA supporters would reach such a volume they'd grow tired of winning. Yet Trump is such a polarizing president — one whose 'wins' are sometimes more theater than substance — that his current streak bears close examination. Internationally, it is fair to ask: Is Trump racking up victories for the American people or for himself? Is his coercive power over allies and smaller states a sign of strength or the behavior of a schoolyard tough guy? And what will be the consequence of his wins in the long term — years after his zest for a headline proclaiming a great 'deal' has passed? The alliances that made the US a superpower seem especially vulnerable in this regard. If Trump is really a dominant global force, the proof will come in his handling of three critical issues highlighted on his trip to Scotland: a wrenching famine in Gaza, the war in Ukraine and trade. Trump made surprising tonal shifts Monday on Gaza and Ukraine. Responding to hideous video of malnourished children in Gaza, Trump contradicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's claim that there's no starvation in the enclave after months of Israeli bombardments. 'We have to get the kids fed,' Trump said, promising to set up food distribution centers to alleviate the growing famine. But he offered few details about how this would work in a war zone where civilians have been killed lining up for food. He also ignored US complicity in the aid crisis following difficulties faced by a Washington-backed Israeli program that bypassed UN experts. Perhaps Trump's commitment is a genuine shift and could lead to him undercutting Netanyahu, a leader who has repeatedly rebuffed US pressure and damaged the president's wish to be seen as a peacemaker. It could be, that as happened after chemical weapons attacks in Syria in 2017, Trump was truly moved by heartbreaking footage of suffering children. But a president with a sharp political sense may have also calculated that growing outrage toward Israel meant he might end up sharing the blame for the horror. The cynic's case is supported by his previous suggestion that Gazans should leave to allow the creation of a 'Middle East Riviera' beach resort. And Trump's evisceration of USAID means the dying Gazan kids will be far from alone. The second test of Trump's global power will come over Ukraine. The president on Monday vented growing frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin's refusal to accept his generous suggestions for a peace deal in Ukraine, capping his previous 50-day deadline for action to 10 or 12 days. 'We have such nice conversations, such respectful and nice conversations. And then people die the following night,' Trump said. If Trump really switches from buttering up Putin to punishing him, he could hurt Russia, especially with secondary sanctions that bankroll the war by being Moscow's oil exports. But there's a huge problem: That would require the US to directly take on powers such as India and China, risking global economic blowback. With Trump in Scotland, his trade negotiators were in Sweden holding high-level talks with China that could yield another 'win' for his tariff strategy and potentially the spectacle of a presidential visit to Beijing this year. Is he really ready to risk all this for Ukraine — a nation that he thinks has already had too much US aid? A robust move against Putin in the coming days that could also rebound against Xi — even against Trump's own political interests — would show the president is willing not just to lord it over Europeans but to stand up to the most ruthless leaders. Failing to take such action would validate critics who see Trump's irritation at Putin as less about Ukraine's plight than about the embarrassment about the president's Nobel Prize campaign being thwarted by his erstwhile hero. On the surface, Trump pulled off a genuine win against the European Union in the trade deal and for his 'America First' trade policies, which he views as reversing decades of partners taking advantage of the United States in the interest of reviving American manufacturing. The EU chose not to use its own economic might to inflict pain on the US economy. Instead, it accepted a deal that will see the imposition of a 15% tariff on European exports. The backlash was swift. 'An alliance of free peoples, gathered to assert their values and defend their interests, resolves to submission,' French Prime Minister François Bayrou wrote on X. But others saw pragmatism rather than capitulation, because it's becoming clear that tariffs are existential for Trump — as shown by similar levies included in recent trade deals announced with Japan and the Philippines. Europe's already-sluggish economic growth will take a hit. But a trade war would be worse. 'Those who expect a hurricane are grateful for a storm,' said Wolfgang Große Entrup, the head of the German Chemical Industry Association. Trump's estimation that the EU agreement was 'the biggest deal ever' is hyperbole. The short framework is far from a detailed agreement, which may take years to negotiate and thousands of pages to spell out. This all looks like Trump's classic habit of spinning a small breakthrough as a gargantuan win. The framework announcement by the White House is thin and full of conditional language. On closer inspection, it's not clear exactly what the EU has given away. There is no clear indication that the Europeans have ceded to US demands to accept its hormone-treated beef or to ease regulation of Silicon Valley firms. European leaders are playing a long game. A trade war with Trump might have destroyed their efforts to prevent him rupturing the transatlantic alliance, which included a pledge for NATO members to raise defense spending to 5% by 2035 during his last transatlantic trip. It may also not be a coincidence that Trump's change of tack on Ukraine and Gaza — which brought him closer to two critical European foreign policy priorities — came hours after the EU concessions in the trade agreement. Trump's wins are in the open. Europeans are more subtle. Starmer is following the same gameplay. His willingness to check his political dignity at the door each time he meets Trump has yielded a friendship with the president — and a tariff rate of 10%, better than that imposed on the EU. Trump's binary view of a life in pursuit of wins means that he must always come out on top and those on the other side must lose. Eventually, this is bound to alienate some of America's best friends. This doesn't matter in the 'America First' creed, which seeks to leverage US might against smaller nations whether they are allies or adversaries. But US alliances and its leadership of like-minded democracy were the key to Washington's power since the end of World War II. And sometimes the country needs its friends — like after the September 11 attacks in 2001. Trump is burning through American soft power at a frightening rate. And as some of America's traditional allies consider closer ties to China, there are clear signs that Trump's transactional approach could wreak long-term damage. In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, former Bush administration foreign policy official Kori Schake writes that the Trump team is hastening a future in which countries 'opt out of the existing US-led international order or construct a new one that would be antagonistic to American interests.' And it's not even clear that many of Trump's wins will bring greater security at home. After all, by punishing Europe with a 15% tariff on its goods, Trump has imposed yet another consumption tax on Americans. 'It's a number that will hurt both the US and EU economies,' Fredrik Persson, president of BusinessEurope, told CNN's Richard Quest.
Yahoo
5 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Self-deportations. Factory layoffs. Military zones. How Trump is transforming the U.S.-Mexico border.
Juan Ortíz trudged through 100-degree heat along the U.S.-Mexico border, weighed down by a backpack full of water bottles that he planned to leave for migrants trying to cross this rugged terrain. Only there hadn't been many migrants of late. When Ortíz started water drops in this especially dangerous stretch of desert near El Paso nearly two years ago, he sometimes encountered dozens of people trying to reach the U.S. in a single afternoon. Now he rarely sees any. Border crossings began falling during the final months of President Biden's term, and have plunged to their lowest levels in decades under President Trump. 'It's dramatically different,' Ortíz said, the desert silent except for the crunch of his footsteps in the sand and the whir of a Border Patrol helicopter overhead. 'Migrants no longer have any hope.' These borderlands surrounding El Paso were long a place of risk but also opportunity. Migrants chasing the American dream crossed by the tens of thousands annually, sometimes dodging federal agents and often seeking them out to ask for asylum. But Trump's immigration crackdown — a total ban on asylum, a mass deportation campaign and the unprecedented militarization of the border — has altered life here in myriad ways. Across the Rio Grande from El Paso in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez, shelters once hummed with life, rich with the smell of cooked stews and the chatter of people plotting their passage to the U.S. Today those shelters are largely empty, populated by migrants stranded in Mexico when Trump took office, and others who were in the United States but decided to leave, spooked by policies designed to instill fear. Maikold Zapata, 22, had been one of the lucky ones. He entered the U.S. last year via CBP One, a government app that helped more than 900,000 migrants make asylum appointments at ports of entry. Zapata worked as a landscaper in El Paso, sending most of his earnings to his family back in Venezuela but occasionally splurging on a steak dinner or a visit to a water park with friends. What kept Zapata up at night was a looming court date for his immigration case. Since Trump took office, Zapata had heard about federal agents showing up even at routine immigration hearings and taking migrants away in handcuffs. He was afraid of being arrested and sent to a detention facility like the so-called Alligator Alcatraz in Florida, or to a far-away country — perhaps El Salvador or South Sudan, where authorities have shipped U.S. deportees in recent months. 'Imagine arriving in Africa with no documents and no money," Zapata said. "No." Missing his early July court date was also not an option, since the electronic bracelet on his wrist allowed immigration agents to track his location. So Zapata stuffed his few possessions in a backpack and walked south over the U.S.-Mexico border bridge, abandoning his asylum claim and the dream he had worked his way across two continents to achieve. He plans to return to South America, likely to Colombia, where his mother is living. "I'll go back, working the whole way again." For now he is living at Oasis de Migrante, a small shelter in downtown Juárez, where he has befriended another Venezuelan who made a similar choice. Richard Osorio, 35, decided to leave the U.S. after his husband landed in immigrant detention. Osorio, who worked in home care for the elderly, said it felt like only a matter of time before immigration agents captured him: "I was filled with fear." He hopes that his partner's attorney can persuade the U.S. to deport the man to Mexico, and that he and Osorio can make a life there. The vast majority of migrants languishing along the border never made it to the United States. Eddy Lalvay got close. He was 17 when he and his 5-year-old nephew, Gael, arrived in Juárez last year. Originally from Ecuador, they were trying to reach New Jersey, where Gael's mother lives. But before they could cross, they were detained by Mexican authorities, who sent them to a government shelter for minors. Lalvay was released when he turned 18. But Gael remains in custody, where he recently turned 6, and authorities say they will release him only to a parent or a grandparent. "I'm trying to be strong, but I feel awful," Lalvay said on a recent afternoon as he sat at another shelter in a working-class neighborhood boxed in by sprawling industrial parks. Francisco González Palacios, a Christian pastor who runs the facility and leads a network of faith-based shelters, said the number of migrants housed by the network has dropped from 1,400 to 250 in recent months. "Nobody is coming from the south," he said. Some shelters and nonprofit groups providing legal or humanitarian assistance to migrants may have to close, he said, because many were indirectly funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Trump shuttered. Read more: Trump promised vast deportations to Mexico. Why are the numbers so low? He tells the migrants gathered at his shelter to rethink their goals now that their "plan A" — a life in the U.S. — is out of reach. "Look for a plan B," he says. "Stay awhile, start to work. God will help you." But other Trump policies are hurting the economy in the region, limiting opportunities from migrants. Juárez has long drawn Mexicans from poorer parts of the country who come to work in its factories, which boomed under the North American Free Trade Agreement, churning out auto parts and other goods destined for the U.S. But Trump's on-again, off-again threats of tariffs on goods from Mexico have stunned industry in the Juárez area, with factories laying off thousands of workers. "We're in the middle of tremendous uncertainty," said María Teresa Delgado Zarate, vice president of INDEX Juárez, a trade group. About 308,000 workers are employed in factories today, she said, down from 340,000 a few years ago. Mexican Juan Bustos, 52, recently lost his assembly line job making auto parts. Most days, he lines up at 6 a.m. outside factories that say they are hiring to try to get new work. "It's not easy like it was before," he said. So much of life in Juárez depends on decisions made in Washington, he said. "He changes his mind minute to minute," Bustos said of Trump. "We're at his mercy." On the U.S. side, industry is also reeling from the tariff uncertainty. Jerry Pacheco, who operates an industrial park in Santa Teresa, N.M., a few miles west of El Paso, said several companies that planned new projects there have pulled out since Trump took office. His park abuts a new militarized zone that stretches 200 miles across a vast expanse of New Mexico. Another 63-mile-long zone has been established along the border nearby in Texas. The Pentagon, which made the designations, has deployed some 9,000 active-duty troops to the border as part of Trump's directive to expand the military's role in reducing migrant crossings. Migrants who enter the new "national defense" zones while crossing the border are being detained by U.S. troops, charged with trespassing and turned over to immigration authorities. It's part of a broader militarization of immigration enforcement in this stretch of border. U-2 spy planes have been flying missions in the skies. At the nearby Army base of Ft. Bliss, the U.S. is constructing a new 5,000-bed immigrant detention camp. The U.S. has also pushed Mexico to keep migrants from reaching Juárez and other border cities, and Mexican troops have ramped up enforcement in recent years. Migrant advocates blame those policies on a deadly fire at a detention center in Juárez in 2023 that killed 40 migrants and injured 27. Ortíz, the activist, used to traverse the part of the border that has been turned into a national defense zone, leaving water for the migrants who crossed. But on a recent afternoon, while heading out to check on a water tank, he was stopped by Border Patrol agents who warned him he was trespassing on military land. The buildup of troops at the border and Trump's changes to the asylum system have made it nearly impossible for migrants to cross, Ortíz said. In June, there were fewer Border Patrol encounters with migrants than in any month on record, according to the White House. On the day with fewest encounters, border agents apprehended just 137 people across the entire 2,000-mile long border. But Ortíz is convinced that migration levels can't stay this low forever. There are too many jobs that need filling north of the border, he said, and too much poverty and strife south of it. This region has been a site of migration since pre-colonial times, he said. El Paso, which means "the pass," got its name from Spanish explorers who arrived in the late 16th century and established a trade route here leading from Mexico City to Santa Fe. Movement, he said, is part of our nature. "You will never be able to fully stop human migration," Ortíz said. "You never have and you never will.' Those most desperate to cross will find a way, he says. And that will probably mean paying smugglers even larger sums and taking riskier routes. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.