House won’t vote for Epstein documents release this week – report
The House of Representatives will not be voting to push for the release of any Jeffrey Epstein-related documents this week, Politico reports.
Republican leaders in the House, including Speaker Mike Johnson, reportedly have an understanding with the White House to give the Trump administration more time to fulfill its promise of releasing more documents.
Late last week, Johnson and Republican colleagues drafted a resolution to compel the release of Epstein case information. The resolution is a Republican-led alternative to legislation pushed by Democratic representative Ro Khanna that would compel the release of more Epstein files.
Key events
President Donald Trump threatened to appeal a federal judge’s decision in Massachusetts amid the ongoing and escalating battle between his administration and Harvard University.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that the federal judge hearing the case is a “TOTAL DISASTER” and that when “she rules against us, we will IMMEDIATELY appeal, and WIN.”
Massachusetts district judge Judge Allison Burroughs heard arguments from lawyers with Harvard and the federal government on Monday, in a case that may decide whether the Trump administration’s attempts to cut billions of dollars in university funding is legal. Burroughs has not yet ruled on Monday’s arguments.
In his Truth Social post, Trump also said Harvard is “anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and anti-America.”
Border Patrol agent: immigration officials not leaving LA until ‘mission is accomplished’
The US Border Patrol chief patrol agent for the El Centro Sector in southern California posted a video on X (formerly Twitter) saying that federal immigration officials “are not leaving” Los Angeles until “the mission is accomplished.”
“Better get used to us now because this is going to be normal very soon,” Gregory K. Bovino, the Border Patrol agent said in a video. “I don’t work for [Los Angeles mayor] Karen Bass, the federal government doesn’t work for Karen Bass.”
Border Patrol and other immigration officials have been conducting operations in Los Angeles to arrest, detain and deport undocumented immigrants. The operations gained widespread backlash in early June. Protests, opposing immigration arrests, engulfed certain areas of the city.
Texas’s Republican-led state legislature is pushing to redistrict the state in a way that would favor Republicans when electing House representatives, the Washington Post reports.
During the state’s special legislative session, beginning today, Trump is pushing for lawmakers to redistrict the state to add up to five more House districts.
National Democratic Redistricting Committee, an anti-gerrymandering group, threatened to file lawsuits to stop attempts to redistrict the state.
The special session was called by Texas’s state governor Greg Abbott after devastating floods in central Texas.
Four senators meet with Canadian PM ahead of 1 August trade deadline
Four US senators met with Canadian prime minister Mark Carney amid the looming 1 August deadline to strike a new trade and security deal.
The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) is being renegotiated and has faced strain from the Trump administration regarding a few key points, including lumber, digital services taxes and metal tariffs.
This is the second congressional delegation to visit the Canadian prime minister in the past three months, Politico reports.
Democratic senator Maria Cantwell, from Washington, is pushing for the Trump administration to bolster the US government’s weather disaster readiness, after recent tragic floods, hurricanes and wildfires, and as the administration seeks to slash resources.
This comes as the Trump administration is pushing to drastically reduce the budget for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The Trump administration is looking to cut the NOAA’s budget by 27%, a reduction of $2.2 billion.
In a letter, Sen. Cantwell made five recommendations. They include modernizing weather data collection, funding more research and modernizing alert systems.
“Communities across the United States are experiencing more frequent, intense, and costly flash floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, atmospheric rivers, landslides, heatwaves, and wildfires,” Cantwell wrote. “We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create the world’s best weather forecasting system that would provide Americans with much more detailed and customized alerts days instead of minutes ahead of a looming extreme weather event.”
House won’t vote for Epstein documents release this week – report
The House of Representatives will not be voting to push for the release of any Jeffrey Epstein-related documents this week, Politico reports.
Republican leaders in the House, including Speaker Mike Johnson, reportedly have an understanding with the White House to give the Trump administration more time to fulfill its promise of releasing more documents.
Late last week, Johnson and Republican colleagues drafted a resolution to compel the release of Epstein case information. The resolution is a Republican-led alternative to legislation pushed by Democratic representative Ro Khanna that would compel the release of more Epstein files.
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Suzan DelBene is warning Republicans to “be careful what they ask for” as her party prepares to launch counter-redistricting efforts in Democratic-controlled states.
Speaking to CNN’s Kate Bolduan, Delbene signaled that Democratic governors nationwide are ready to respond in kind to Republican gerrymandering attempts, arguing that GOP redistricting will ultimately backfire by creating vulnerable Republican seats.
“We absolutely are going to respond because we want to stand up for working families,” DelBene said. “We want to make sure that voices are being heard and that Republicans are not rigging the system.”
The Federal Aviation Administration tells the Guardian they will launch an investigation after a Delta Connection flight was forced to make emergency evasive maneuvers to avoid a B-52 bomber approaching at high speed near Minot International Airport on Friday night.
According to a video on social media, the SkyWest pilot had already been cleared to land when the military aircraft – returning from a flyover at the North Dakota State Fair – forced the pilot to make an “aggressive maneuver” to avoid collision.
Lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia are requesting for a delay in his release from a Tennessee jail, fearing the Trump administration will immediately deport the Maryland construction worker if he’s freed.
Abrego Garcia became a symbol of Trump’s immigration crackdown after being extrajudicially deported to El Salvador in March despite a judge’s protection order, only to be returned last month to face what his attorneys are calling “preposterous” human smuggling charges.
Trump Media acquires $2bn in Bitcoin and crypto
Trump Media, which runs the Truth Social social media platform, has ploughed $2 billion into Bitcoin and crypto securities, and in a press release CEO Devin Nunes claimed the move will protect the company from “discrimination by financial institutions”.
The Trump family’s relentless crypto push since January signals the president’s media empire is banking heavily on cryptocurrency’s continued rise.
A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration illegally withheld real-time data showing how it spent billions in congressionally mandated funds. Judge Emmet Sullivan said the data, required by law, is essential for watchdogs and lawmakers to track whether the administration was improperly delaying or blocking spending.
“There is nothing unconstitutional about Congress requiring the Executive Branch to inform the public of how it is apportioning the public’s money,” Judge Sullivan writes. “Defendants are therefore required to stop violating the law!”
Epstein jury transcripts won’t reveal much new information, ex federal prosecutor says
A former federal prosecutor told AP that she doesn’t expect the grand jury transcripts from the Jeffrey Epstein case to reveal much new information.
Sarah Krissoff, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, told AP: “It’s not going to be much.” She added that testimony could run to about 60 pages because “the Southern District of New York’s practice is to put as little information as possible into the grand jury”.
Krissoff said: “They basically spoon-feed the indictment to the grand jury. That’s what we’re going to see. I just think it’s not going to be that interesting. … I don’t think it’s going to be anything new.”
Trump directed his attorney general, Pam Bondi, to request the release of the transcripts in an effort to quell the political crisis linekd to the Epstein case that was increasingly engulfing his government last week. On Friday, the US Department of Justice asked a federal court to unseal the transcripts in Jeffrey Epstein’s case.
George Chidi
A plan for Texas to redraw its congressional districts and gain five additional Republican seats barrels through flimsy legal arguments and political norms like a rough-stock rodeo bronco through a broken chute.
But the fiddly process of drawing the maps to Republicans’ advantage for 2026 may require more finesse than cowboy politics can produce.
“It is more than redistricting. It’s really theft,” said Democratic representative Al Green, whose Houston-area congressional district is likely to be one targeted by Republicans in a redrawn map. “It’s the kind of election theft that you use when you realize that you can’t win playing with the hand that you’ve been dealt. So, you decide that you’ll just rearrange the cards so that they favor you.”
The attempted power grab comes at a time when the state legislature is meant to be focused on the floods that killed more than 130 people just two weeks ago.
Democrats need to take bolder and more aggressive actions to oppose the Trump administration, protesters across the US told the Guardian during a day of rallies last week honoring the late congressman John Lewis.
Lewis, a civil rights leader and Democratic congressman from Georgia who died five years ago, called for people to participate in non-violent “good trouble, necessary trouble” to advance their causes.
While some elected Democrats have escalated their tactics against Donald Trump and his administration – delivering multi-hour speeches, risking arrest, and physically interposing themselves as a disruption – protesters said they want to see a more united, organized, and aggressive opposition party.
“There’s a lot more that I would like to see from them,” said Jace Snyder, a weather research technician from Lovejoy, Georgia who attended the protest in Atlanta. Snyder is particularly concerned about the Trump administration’s cuts to federal agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (Noaa).
It’s a year since Joe Biden dropped out of presidential race
One year ago today, Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Vice-President Kamala Harris to take his place at the top of their party’s ticket.
The extraordinary decision upended American politics and Democrats are still wrestling with the fallout of Biden’s late exit from the 2024 race for the White House.
As the Guardian’s David Smith wrote:
Some argue that he could have pushed on and won; most believe that he left the race too late and paved the way for Trump’s return to the White House. Younger voters accuse the party establishment of betrayal and beat the drum of generational change.
