Justice department watchdog will investigate release of Epstein files – US politics live

Key events

Show key events only

Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature

Jeremy Barr

Dozens of protesters, including members of Congress, gathered along the National Mall on Thursday to protest an “intimate” dinner being held by Paramount Skydance’s chief executive, David Ellison, “in celebration of the first amendment” and “honoring the Trump White House and CBS White House correspondents”, and attended by Donald Trump.

Paramount has faced criticism for the dinner, which has been seen by some as illustrative of the cozy relationship between the Ellisons and the White House – right as the Trump administration is weighing whether to approve the company’s $110bn merger with CNN parent company WarnerBros Discovery (WBD). The dinner comes before Saturday’s White House correspondents’ dinner, which Trump will attend. His defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is expected to sit at one of the many tables bought by CBS News for the event.

Earlier Thursday, WBD shareholders voted “overwhelmingly” to approve the merger, which will still require approval from the Department of Justice and European regulators.

The US representative Jamie Raskin, who has been vocal in his criticism of the Ellisons’ ownership of CBS News, referred to the event as “a lavish oligarch’s dinner for Donald Trump”.

“We’re gathered here together tonight [because] in the building behind us, David Ellison is hosting a dinner to honor President Trump, a dinner that’s designed to cement the Ellisons to the president in their years-running corrupt merger scheme,” Raskin said.

Speakers encouraged the crowd not to give up hope on blocking the merger, with many antitrust experts viewing a lawsuit from a coalition of state attorneys general as the most likely vehicle for doing so.

Norm Eisen, founder of Democracy Defenders Action, said Thursday’s dinner honoring the Trump administration “resembles a celebration of the first amendment the same way a book burning is a celebration of the written word”.

“That has nothing to do with celebrating the first amendment,” he added. “You all are celebrating the first amendment by being here to block the merger.”

When Pete Hegseth was asked about Pope Leo XIV’s condemnation of the war in Iran, and comments from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops suggesting the conflict is not a “just war”, the defense secretary simply said that the pope was “going to do his thing”.

“We know what our mission is,” Hegseth added. “We follow that the orders of the president. We’ve got lawyers all over the place looking at what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, and giving us every authority necessary under the constitution and under our laws to execute it.”

During his remarks at the Pentagon today, Pete Hegseth noted that “Europe and Asia have benefited from our protection for decades, but the time for free riding is over.”

This comes after a leaked Pentagon internal email proposed that the US should reassess its support for Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands because the UK did not do enough to assist the American bombing of Iran.

The memo, reported by Reuters, also argued that Spain should be suspended from Nato for refusing to allow US warplanes to be based in or fly over the country during Operation Epic Fury, though it is not clear if there are mechanisms for doing so.

“Being an ally is not a one-way street. It’s a two-way street. We are not counting on Europe, but they need the strait of Hormuz much more than we do,” Hegseth told reporters. The defense secretary said that European leaders should have “less fancy conferences” and “get in a boat”.

Pete Hegseth speaks during a press briefing at the Pentagon, on 24 April 2026. Photograph: Annabelle Gordon/AFP/Getty Images

Tom Ambrose

US defense secretary Pete Hegseth opens the press conference in much the same style as his previous ones: by trumpeting America’s military success in Iran and saying Iran has an opportunity to strike a “good deal”.

He says the blockade in the strait of Hormuz is “growing” and has “gone global”, referring to the seizure of two Iranian dark fleet vessels.

“We are in control; nothing in, nothing out,” he says. He adds that 34 ships have been turned away from the strait so far.

Hegseth is now repeating the exact same lines from previous press conferences, speaking about the Iranian navy “sitting at the bottom of the sea” and praising president Donald Trump’s “fortitude”

Donald Trump will start his day in Washington with a number of meetings at the White House. He’ll then travel to Mar-a-Lago at around 3pm ET, and we may hear from the president as he departs. We’ll make sure to bring you the latest lines if he stops for reporters.

The White House said that Trump issued a 90-day extension to the Jones Act waiver, making it easier for non-American vessels to transport oil and natural gas in the wake of the Iran War.

Trump first announced a 60-day waiver in mid-March and the move has been seen as helping to stabilize energy prices and making it easier for more ships to travel to the US following the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

The post on social media by a White House press aide said:

New data compiled since the initial waiver was issued revealed that significantly more supply was able to reach US ports faster.

Donald Trump has threatened to impose “a big tariff” on the UK if it does not drop its digital services tax on US social media firms.

The digital services tax, introduced in 2020, imposes a 2% levy on the revenues of several big US tech companies.

Speaking to reporters from the Oval Office on Thursday, the US president said: “We’ve been looking at it and we can meet that very easily by just putting a big tariff on the UK, so they better be careful.

“If they don’t drop the tax, we’ll probably put a big tariff on the UK.”

The tax targets companies whose worldwide revenues from digital activities exceed £500m ($673m), with more than £25m of the revenues from UK users.

While it raises more than most of the targeted businesses pay in UK corporation tax, Amazon, Google and Apple pass the tax on to the bills of the third-party businesses and sellers that use their sites.

The Trump administration is vowing to crack down on foreign tech companies’ exploitation of US artificial intelligence models, singling out China at a time that country is narrowing the gap with the US in the AI race.

In a Thursday memo, Michael Kratsios, the president’s chief science and technology adviser, accused foreign entities “principally based in China” of engaging in deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns to “distill,” or extract capabilities from, leading AI systems made in the US and “exploiting American expertise and innovation.”

The administration, Kratsios wrote, will work with American AI companies to identify such activities, build defenses and find ways to punish offenders.

The memo arrives at a time when China is challenging US dominance in artificial intelligence, an area where the White House says the US must prevail to set global standards and reap economic and military benefits. But the US-China gap in performance of top AI models has “effectively closed,” according to a recent report from Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered AI.

China’s embassy in Washington said it opposed “the unjustified suppression of Chinese companies by the US”.

An internal Pentagon email outlines options for the United States to punish Nato allies it believes failed to support US operations in the war with Iran, including suspending Spain from the alliance and reviewing the US position on Britain’s claim to the Falkland Islands, a US official told Reuters.

The policy options are detailed in a note expressing frustration at some allies’ perceived reluctance or refusal to grant the United States access, basing and overflight rights - known as ABO - for the Iran war, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the email.

The email stated that ABO is “just the absolute baseline for Nato,” according to the official, who added that the options were circulating at high levels in the Pentagon.

One option in the email envisions suspending “difficult” countries from important or prestigious positions at Nato, the official said.

A majority of Americans blame Donald Trump for surging gasoline prices, which is weighing on his Republican party ahead of November’s congressional midterm elections, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Some 77% of registered voters in the poll, which concluded early this week, said Trump bears at least a fair amount of responsibility for the recent rise in gas prices, which was sparked by his decision to launch a war on Iran along with US ally Israel.

The view was widely shared across the political spectrum, with 55% of Republican voters, 82% of independents and 95% of Democrats pinning blame on the president for the higher costs.

Some 58% of voters, including one in five Republicans and two-thirds of independents, said they would be less likely to support candidates in the November midterms who support Trump’s approach to the conflict with Iran.

Epstein files release to be investigated by DOJ watchdog

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

The Justice Department’s internal watchdog will review the agency’s handling of records related to financier Jeffrey Epstein, including whether all relevant documents were disclosed and properly redacted.

William Blier, acting head of the department’s Office of Inspector General, said the inquiry will examine compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, legislation passed by Congress in November requiring the public release of records related to Epstein, with limited exceptions.

He said:

Our preliminary objective is to evaluate the DOJ’s processes for identifying, redacting, and releasing records in its possession as required by the Act.

Blier added that the office will also look into “DOJ’s processes for addressing post-release publication concerns.”

President Donald Trump, who had previously dismissed controversy surrounding Epstein as a “hoax” driven by Democrats, initially opposed the measure before ultimately backing and signing it amid pressure from fellow Republicans.

The Justice Department released approximately 3.5 million pages of documents related to its Epstein investigations, though the disclosure came more than a month after the statutory deadline for release.

Politico reported on Thursday:

Alleged victims of sexual abuse by Epstein have complained that DOJ repeatedly failed to redact photos and other details that could reveal their identities and did not make public all the information prosecutors have about Epstein associates who were allegedly aware of his crimes or conspired with him but were never charged.

Lawmakers have made similar complaints and have said they suspect DOJ has not released some relevant documents.

In other developments:

• The Trump administration has moved to reclassify marijuana, more than four months after Trump signed an executive order directing the attorney general to move it from schedule I to schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act.

• Trump, apparently abandoning his attempt to frighten Iran’s leaders into negotiating by channeling Richard Nixon’s “madman” theory, ruled out the use of nuclear weapons in his conflict with Iran.

• Trump has decided to invite wanted war criminal Vladimir Putin to the G20 summit in December at Trump’s Doral golf resort, the Washington Post reports.

• Trump confirmed that the government is considering a plan to bail out or ‘“just buy” Spirit Airlines, but confused Barack Obama with Joe Biden, and Jet Blue with People Express, which has been defunct since 1987.

• India’s foreign ministry denounced comments from the rightwing US commentator Michael Savage, posted on social media by Trump, which argued against awarding birthright citizenship to the US-born children of immigrants “from China or India or some other hellhole on the planet”.