Trump news at a glance: president wants Murdoch deposed in Epstein libel case within two weeks
The US president sued the publication and its owner over a 17 July article asserting that Trump's name was on a 2003 birthday greeting for Jeffrey Epstein, who was later a convicted sex offender.
Trump's lawsuit called the alleged birthday greeting 'fake' and said the Journal published its article to harm the president's reputation. In a court filing on Monday, Trump's lawyers said Trump told Murdoch before the article was published that the letter referenced in the story was fake, and Murdoch told Trump he would 'take care of it'.
'Murdoch's direct involvement further underscores Defendants' actual malice,' Trump's lawyers wrote, referring to the legal standard Trump must clear to prevail in his lawsuit.
His lawyers asked US district judge Darrin Gayles in Miami to compel Murdoch, 94, to testify within 15 days. Dow Jones, the Journal's publisher, has previously said the paper stood by its reporting and would vigorously defend against the lawsuit.
Here are the key Trump stories of the day:
Ghislaine Maxwell asks US supreme court to overturn conviction
Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker and associate of Jeffrey Epstein, has requested that the US supreme court overturn her conviction, saying she was unjustly prosecuted.
Maxwell's submission to the supreme court comes days after she met justice department officials, as discussions began to see whether she would turn into a US government cooperator. Observers have suggested Maxwell may be able to expose new information about Epstein's sex trafficking and the wealthy individuals who may have also been involved. It is not clear if Maxwell will become a US government cooperator and what she may receive in return.
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Trump acknowledges 'real starvation' in Gaza
Donald Trump told Israel to allow 'every ounce of food' into Gaza as he acknowledged for the first time that there is 'real starvation' in the region.
During a visit to Britain, the US president contradicted Benjamin Netanyahu after the Israeli prime minister claimed it was a 'bold-faced lie' to say Israel was causing hunger in Gaza.
Trump is under increasing pressure to intervene in the humanitarian crisis, with dozens of Palestinians having died of hunger in recent weeks in a crisis attributed by the UN and other humanitarian organisations to Israel's blockade of almost all aid into the territory.
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Justice department sued over legal memo on Qatar's luxury jet gift
The US Department of Justice is facing a federal lawsuit for refusing to release a legal memorandum that reportedly cleared the way for Donald Trump's acceptance of a $400m luxury aircraft from Qatar's government.
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Trump's tariffs to face major court test from US small business owners
Donald Trump's strategy of imposing sweeping tariffs on America's main trading partners will face a major test in the US courts on Thursday, four days after the president hailed the 'powerful deal' reached with the EU and just hours before a new round of punishing import duties is set to come into effect.
Trump has underpinned his tariff policy with an emergency power that is now being challenged as unlawful in the federal courts. On Thursday the US court of appeals for the federal circuit will hear oral arguments in the case, VOS Selections v Trump.
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US-EU trade deal is a 'dark day' for Europe, says French PM
The French prime minister, François Bayrou, said the EU had capitulated to Donald Trump's threats of ever-increasing tariffs, as he labelled the framework deal struck in Scotland on Sunday as a 'dark day' for the EU.
'It is a dark day when an alliance of free peoples, brought together to affirm their common values and to defend their common interests, resigns itself to submission,' Bayrou wrote on X on Monday.
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Trump cuts deadline for Putin to reach Ukraine peace deal to '10 or 12 days'
Donald Trump's timeline for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine has sped up, the president said while visiting Nato ally Great Britain on Monday.
'I'm going to make a new deadline of about 10, 10 or 12 days from today,' Trump said in response to a question while sitting with the British prime minister, Keir Starmer.
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Trump told to keep funding Planned Parenthood with Medicaid money
The Trump administration must continue reimbursing Planned Parenthood clinics for Medicaid-funded services, a federal judge ruled on Monday, in an escalating legal war between the reproductive health giant and the White House over Republican efforts to 'defund' Planned Parenthood.
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What else happened today:
The US cannot sell any Virginia-class nuclear submarines to Australia without doubling its production rate, because it is making too few for its own defence, the navy's nominee for chief of operations has told Congress.
Twenty-one Senate Democrats are they say has resulted in the killings of more than 700 civilians seeking food and violated decades of humanitarian law.
Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace has claimed she cruises the web for videos of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents dragging people into custody, saying she 'can think of nothing more American'.
Catching up? Here's what happened 27 July 2025.
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25 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump confessed ear injury was ‘not too bad' at RNC despite wearing oversized bandage, Congressman says
Donald Trump allegedly confessed to GOP colleagues that his ear injury was 'not too bad' at the Republican National Convention, despite wearing his infamous oversized bandage. The then-presidential nominee told Byron Donalds that doctors had advised him to keep the bandage on, the Florida Congressman said, speaking at a GOP conference over the weekend. Trump arrived at the convention in July 2024 wearing the bandage, two days after surviving an attempted assassination while out campaigning in Butler, Pennsylvania, during which a bullet clipped his right ear. Many convention goers decided to mimic the look in solidarity, also sporting bandages of their own. However, Donalds recalled, Trump himself was unenthused about his medical head accessory when the pair met shortly after his convention speech. "I see the bandage, and the second thing [Trump says] is 'what do you think of the bandage?'" Donalds said. "I said, 'I don't like it. Take it off.' That's what I said. 'I don't like it. Take it off.' I said 'let everybody see the ear.'' "He was like, 'you know, it's not too bad. It's not too bad'..."Doc Ronny [Jackson] says, I gotta wear the bandage." 'I'm like 'so what? You're the president just take the thing off,' Donalds added. The president's bandage became the inspiration for many at the RNC, with one Arizona delegate Joe Neglia describing it at the time as 'the newest fashion trend.' 'Everybody in the world is going to be wearing these pretty soon,' Neglia told CBS, while sporting a piece of white tape over his own ear. 'When he came in [to the convention], and there was that eruption of love in the room, I thought, 'what can I do to honor the truth? What can I possibly do?'' 'And then I saw the bandage and I thought, I can do that. So, I put it on simply to honor Trump and to express sympathy with him and unity with him.' At a rally shortly after the convention, Trump appeared to have downgraded his ear bandage, instead sporting a skin-colored band-aid covering the top part of his right ear.
Yahoo
25 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump officials scramble to justify firing of economic statistician – as critics say ‘scary' move is a sign of ‘authoritiarianism'
Members of Donald Trump's team scrambled to provide coherent explanations for the sudden firing of a top official at the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Sunday as Friday's firing resonated throughout Washington and left the White House open to criticism of Trump's 'authoritarian' leanings. The US president directed the firing of Erika McEntarfer on Friday after a jobs report showed private companies adding just 73,000 positions in July, a drop from projections and a further sign that the Trump economy is stalling in the face of growing uncertainty around the president's tariff agenda. McEntarfer's firing was immediately denounced by her Trump-appointed predecessor and numerous others in Washington. Republicans on the Hill struggled to defend it, while members of Donald Trump's team insisted in interviews that the president and the nation needed what he called 'reliable' numbers. Trump accused McEntarfer of cooking the numbers on Kamala Harris's behalf during the 2024 election, and now working to make him look bad, a notion even the president's own advisers wouldn't echo directly. Kevin Hassett, director of the White House economic council, led the efforts to defend the president's decision-making on Sunday. He was joined by Jamieson Greer, the US trade representative. Hassett directly contradicted the president during his interview on Fox News Sunday with Shannon Bream; he argued that it was the formula by which the BLS determined job market gains — not malicious activity by McEntarfer — which needed to be addressed. Pointing to a letter from McEntarfer's predecessors, Bream asked Hassett: 'They're saying it's not good to cast aspersions on what's being done because it's a formula. It's used the same way every single time. So are you saying maybe the formulas, the calculations need to change?' 'That's right. They really need to get back to ground zero and find out why these numbers are so unreliable,' said Hassett.' "The data can't be propaganda. The data has to be something you can trust, because decision-makers throughout the economy trust that these are the data that they can build a factory because they believe, or cut interest rates because they believe. And if the data aren't that good, then it's a real problem for the US,' Hassett continued. He and others pointed to the agency revising totals for May and June as evidence that the BLS required changes: 'We expect more big revisions for the jobs data in September, for example ... we want to know why, we want people to explain it to us.' Greer, during a pre-taped interview with CBS's Face the Nation, backed up Hassett's claims that sharp revisions dating back to 2024 were evidence of the numbers produced by the agency being unreliable. "You want to be able to have somewhat reliable numbers,' he said. 'There are always revisions, but sometimes you see these revisions go in really extreme ways.' But there's still nothing linking McEntarfer to the kind of nefarious activity which Trump alleged she was up to in a Truth Social post. 'I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can't be manipulated for political purposes,' Trump wrote on Friday. He added: 'In my opinion, today's Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad — Just like when they had three great days around the 2024 Presidential Election, and then, those numbers were 'taken away' on November 15, 2024, right after the Election.' No one on the president's team has attempted to present any evidence backing up Trump's claims. A number of McEntarfer's predecessors and other top officialst at the BLS fired back in a statement from a group called the 'Friends of the BLS': 'The President seeks to blame someone for unwelcome economic news.' The president's critics said that the firing and unsupported explanation meant that future figures released by the agency would be thrown into question and was an example of Trump desiring ability to dictate the creation of phony statistics. 'This is the stuff of democracies giving way to authoritarianism,' warned Larry Summers, former director of the White House economic council under Biden (and Hassett's predecessor), on ABC's This Week. 'This is really scary stuff, and it can hardly be surprising that when the rule of law is in a bit question that there's a big uncertainty premium in the markets.' He went on to argue that Trump's battering of Fed Chair Jerome Powell followed in a similar vein, and was behind much of the uncertainty curbing U.S. investments on Wall Street. Friday marked the resumption of Trump's reciprocal tariffs; enforcement of rates as high as 50% on some U.S. trading partners will resume this week. Economists largely agree that those tariffs are driving up consumer prices and stifling U.S. investment rather than encouraging the return of manufacturing plants to America as companies continue to evaluate new costs stemming from Trump's import duties. The job numbers put out by the BLS on a monthly basis are some of the most important statistics gathered by the U.S. government in terms of their ability to move financial markets around the world. Experts say the sharp revisions are a result of more accurate data collection efforts.
Yahoo
25 minutes ago
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Texas House Democrats plan to flee state to try to stop proposed congressional maps
Democratic statehouse legislators are planning to leave Texas on Sunday in order to break the quorum of a special legislative session in which Republican state legislators are aiming to pass a new congressional map that could create up to five new GOP seats. The move comes after a marathon public hearing on the plan in the state Capitol on Friday and less than a week after state Republican legislators proposed the new maps. Republicans hold a majority in the Texas state legislature; Democrats had said they would consider all options to stop the maps from being passed, although their options for striking back have been limited. 'We're not walking out on our responsibilities; we're walking out on a rigged system that refuses to listen to the people we represent. As of today, this corrupt special session is over,' state Rep. Gene Wu, who chairs the House Democratic Caucus, said in a statement. MORE: GOP success with new Texas House map could hinge on Latino voters: ANALYSIS The walkout itself cannot stop the passage of the bill, but Democrats aim to run out the clock on the 30-day special legislative session, which would mean Texas Gov. Greg Abbott would have to call another one. Texas House Democrats previously broke quorum in 2021 to try to stop an elections bill and in 2003 to try to stop a similar redistricting effort by Republicans. Republicans eventually managed to pass the bills both times. President Donald Trump has previously said he wanted Texas legislators to draw five new Republican districts. More than 51 legislators are leaving the state, denying the state House the two-thirds majority out of 150 legislators it needs to have a quorum. An exact number of how many of the 62 Democratic legislators from the state House were leaving was not immediately available. MORE: Eric Holder backs Democratic response to Texas redistricting plan Democrats who break quorum risk accruing a $500-a-day fine, according to the state House rules, and potential legal action. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, speaking with "War Room" host and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon said on Thursday, 'The House rules and the Senate rules both allow for these people to be arrested if they leave ... The challenge is, if they go out of state, we lose jurisdiction, and that -- it's been a challenge in the past, but in the end, as long as the governor is willing to keep calling sessions, ultimately they have to come home.' Paxton also said he was not worried about defending the maps in court: 'We've got, we've got good maps. And the legislature has the right to draw the maps they want. They're politically based, not race based. And if they're politically based, then they're defensible.' MORE: Eric Holder backs Democratic response to Texas redistricting plan Some of the Democratic legislators fleeing the state will appear on Sunday evening with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker at a press conference. Pritzker has been a staunch supporter of Texas Democrats and has floated the possibility of getting Illinois' own congressional maps redrawn if Texas redraws its maps. Illinois' maps have been criticized by outside observers as highly partisan in favor of Democrats. In late June, the chair of the Texas Democrats, Kendall Scudder, flew from Dallas to Oklahoma to see Pritzker, who was giving remarks at the state Democratic Party's dinner. The pair had a private meeting during that to talk about the possibility of lawmakers fleeing the state to Illinois -- and if they were to flee the state, that they would have a place they would feel safe and supported. Since then, Pritzker and Texas Democrats have been in touch, and a small group of them traveled to Chicago in July when members of the delegation left for Illinois and California for brief meetings. Pritzker and his team have been helping behind the scenes to help find hotels in the area for the Democrats, help their operation, and grease the wheels so things go smoothly for them as they head to Illinois. The bill containing the maps had been scheduled to be taken up on the state House floor on Monday.
