Trump slams his own supporters as 'weaklings' for falling for what he now calls the Epstein 'hoax'
NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump is lashing out at his own supporters, accusing them of being duped by Democrats, as he tries to clamp down on criticism over his administration's handling of much-hyped records in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation, which Trump now calls a “Hoax.”
“Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this “bull——,” hook, line, and sinker,” Trump wrote Wednesday on his Truth Social site, using an expletive in his post. “They haven’t learned their lesson, and probably never will, even after being conned by the Lunatic Left for 8 long years.”
“Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore!” he went on. There is no evidence former Democratic officials tampered with the documents or played any role in promoting conspiracies about the files, which members of Trump's administration stoked for years.
The rhetoric marks a dramatic escalation for the Republican president, who has broken with some of his most loyal backers on issues in the past, but never with such fervor. Though Trump cannot legally run for another term, he will need strong support from a united party to pass his remaining legislative agenda in a narrowly-divided Congress and an energized base to turn out in next year's midterm elections.
The schism centers on the administration's handling of documents related to Epstein, who was found dead in his New York jail cell in August 2019, weeks after his arrest on sex trafficking charges. Last week, the Justice Department and the FBI acknowledged in a memo that Epstein did not maintain a “client list" to whom underage girls were trafficked. They also said no more files related to the investigation would be made public, despite past promises from Attorney General Pam Bondi that had raised the expectations of conservative influencers and conspiracy theorists.
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Trump says he's 'highly unlikely' to fire Fed's Powell after floating that idea in private
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he was “highly unlikely” to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, a public statement made less than 24 hours after suggesting in a private meeting that he was leaning in favor of dismissing the head of the nation's central bank.
Trump confirmed that in a White House meeting Tuesday night with about a dozen House Republicans he had discussed the “concept” of dismissing Powell, long a target because of his refusal to lower interest rates as Trump wants.
“Almost every one of them said I should,” Trump said about the lawmakers who had come to talk to him about crypto legislation.
He indicated he was leaning in that direction, according to a White House official. During that session, Trump waved a letter about firing Powell, but a person familiar with the matter said it was essentially a prop drafted by someone else and that the Republican president has not drafted such a letter.
Neither source was authorized to publicly discuss the private meeting and they spoke only on condition on anonymity.
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Army veteran and US citizen arrested in California immigration raid warns it could happen to anyone
A U.S. Army veteran who was arrested during an immigration raid at a Southern California marijuana farm last week said Wednesday he was sprayed with tear gas and pepper spray before being dragged from his vehicle and pinned down by federal agents who arrested him.
George Retes, 25, who works as a security guard at Glass House Farms in Camarillo, said he was arriving at work on July 10 when several federal agents surrounded his car and — despite him identifying himself as a U.S. citizen — broke his window, peppered sprayed him and dragged him out.
“It took two officers to nail my back and then one on my neck to arrest me even though my hands were already behind my back,” Retes said.
The Ventura City native was detained during chaotic raids at two Southern California farms where federal authorities arrested more than 360 people, one of the largest operations since President Donald Trump took office in January. Protesters faced off against federal agents in military-style gear, and one farmworker died after falling from a greenhouse roof.
The raids came more than a month into an extended immigration crackdown by the Trump administration across Southern California that was originally centered in Los Angeles, where local officials say the federal actions are spreading fear in immigrant communities.
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Trump's bid to claw back $9B in foreign aid and public broadcasting funds nears Senate vote
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate is poised to pass Donald Trump's request to cancel about $9 billion in foreign aid and public broadcasting spending, moving forward on one of the president's top priorities despite concerns from several Republican senators.
The legislation, which would go next to the House, would have a tiny impact on the nation's rising debt but could have major ramifications for the spending that is targeted, from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to U.S. food aid programs abroad. It could also complicate efforts to pass additional spending bills this year, as Democrats and some Republicans have argued that they are ceding congressional spending powers to Trump with little idea of how the White House Office of Management and Budget would apply the cuts.
The move to claw back a sliver of federal spending comes after Republicans also muscled Trump’s big tax and spending cut bill to approval without any Democratic support. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that measure will increase future federal deficits by about $3.3 trillion over the coming decade.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Republicans were using the president’s rescissions request to target wasteful spending, and it is a “small but important step for fiscal sanity that we all should be able to agree is long overdue.”
But Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the bill “has a big problem – nobody really knows what program reductions are in it.”
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Judge won't rule this week on releasing Kilmar Abrego Garcia from jail
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia on Wednesday tried to poke holes in the human smuggling case the government is pursuing against him in Tennessee, while a federal judge said he won’t rule this week on freeing Abrego Garcia from jail, a decision that could precipitate his deportation.
Abrego Garcia became a flashpoint in the debate over President Donald Trump’s immigration policies when he was wrongfully deported to his native El Salvador in March. That expulsion violated a U.S. immigration judge’s 2019 order that shields Abrego Garcia from deportation to El Salvador because he likely faces threats of gang violence there.
Facing mounting pressure and a U.S. Supreme Court order, the Republican administration returned Abrego Garcia to the U.S. last month to face the smuggling charges, which his attorneys have called “preposterous.” That case relies on the testimony of cooperating witnesses, several of whom have either requested or received help with immigration and criminal matters in return for their statements, according to earlier testimony.
Under questioning on Wednesday, Homeland Security special agent Peter Joseph said he was unaware that a lead witness against Abrego Garcia was calling other witnesses from jail. Asked whether there was reason to believe they might have coordinated their testimony, Joseph noted that three of the witnesses are related.
“That’s always a possibility,” he said.
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Prince Harry retraces Diana's footsteps by walking through a land mine field in Angola for charity
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — Prince Harry followed in his late mother's footsteps on Wednesday by wearing a flak jacket and walking down a path in an active land mine field in Angola to raise awareness for a charity's work clearing explosives from old warzones.
The Duke of Sussex is in the southern African country with the Halo Trust organization, the same group Princess Diana worked with when she went to Angola in January 1997, seven months before she was killed in a car crash in Paris.
Diana's advocacy and the images of her walking through a minefield helped mobilize support for a land mine ban treaty that was ratified later that year.
Harry walked through a land mine field near a village in Cuito Cuanavale in southern Angola, according to Halo Trust. It's not the first time he has retraced his mother's steps after traveling to Angola for a similar awareness campaign in 2019.
The land mines across Angola were left behind from its 27-year civil war from 1975 to 2002. The Halo Trust says at least 60,000 people have been killed or injured by land mines since 2008. It says it has located and destroyed over 120,000 land mines and 100,000 other explosive devices in Angola since it started work in the country in 1994, but 1,000 minefields still need to be cleared.
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What to know about the African kingdom of Eswatini, where the US sent 5 deportees
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — The United States has deported five immigrants from Vietnam, Jamaica, Cuba, Yemen and Laos to Eswatini, a small country in southern Africa where the king still holds absolute power.
Eswatini says it is holding the men in correctional facilities until they can be sent to their home countries, after it became the latest nation to accept third-country deportees from the U.S.
Here's what to know about Eswatini:
Eswatini is one of a handful of countries that are still absolute monarchies, and the only one in Africa. That means the king has absolute power over government and is not just a figurehead or a ceremonial ruler.
King Mswati III has ruled Eswatini since 1986, when he turned 18 and was allowed to take his place as the monarch. He can make decisions by decree. He succeeded his father, Sobhuza II, who died in 1982.
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Feds charge 3 current or former Louisiana police chiefs in an alleged visa fraud scheme
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Federal authorities have charged three small-town Louisiana police chiefs with taking hundreds of $5,000 bribes over nearly a decade in exchange for filing false police reports that would allow noncitizens to apply for visas that let certain crime victims stay in the U.S.
The false police reports would indicate that the immigrant was a victim of a crime that would qualify them to apply for a so-called U visa, U.S. Attorney Alexander C. Van Hook said Wednesday at a news conference in Lafayette. He said the police officials were paid $5,000 for each name they provided falsified reports for, and that there were hundreds of names over the years.
There had been “an unusual concentration of armed robberies of people who were not from Louisiana," Van Hook said, noting that two other people were also charged in the alleged scheme.
“In fact, the armed robberies never took place,” he said.
Earlier this month, a federal grand jury in Shreveport returned a 62 count indictment charging the five defendants with crimes including conspiracy to commit visa fraud, visa fraud, bribery, mail fraud and money laundering, Van Hook said.
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Researchers try new ways of preserving more hearts for transplants
WASHINGTON (AP) — Two university hospitals are pioneering new ways to expand lifesaving heart transplants for adults and babies — advances that could help recover would-be heart donations that too often go unused.
The new research aims to overcome barriers for using organs from someone who dies when their heart stops. Called DCD, or donation after circulatory death, it involves a controversial recovery technique or the use of expensive machines.
Surgeons at Duke and Vanderbilt universities reported Wednesday that they’ve separately devised simpler approaches to retrieve those hearts. In the New England Journal of Medicine, they described successfully transplanting hearts to a 3-month-old infant at Duke and three men at Vanderbilt.
“These DCD hearts work just as well as hearts from brain-dead donors,” said Vanderbilt lead author Dr. Aaron M. Williams.
Most transplanted hearts come from donors who are brain dead. In those situations, the body is left on a ventilator that keeps the heart beating until the organs are removed.
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Healthy babies born in Britain after scientists used DNA from three people to avoid genetic disease
LONDON (AP) — Eight healthy babies were born in Britain with the help of an experimental technique that uses DNA from three people to help mothers avoid passing devastating rare diseases to their children, researchers reported Wednesday.
Most DNA is found in the nucleus of our cells, and it's that genetic material — some inherited from mom, some from dad — that makes us who we are. But there's also some DNA outside of the cell's nucleus, in structures called mitochondria. Dangerous mutations there can cause a range of diseases in children that can lead to muscle weakness, seizures, developmental delays, major organ failure and death.
Testing during the in vitro fertilization process can usually identify whether these mutations are present. But in rare cases, it's not clear.
Researchers have been developing a technique that tries to avoid the problem by using the healthy mitochondria from a donor egg. They reported in 2023 that the first babies had been born using this method, where scientists take genetic material from the mother's egg or embryo, which is then transferred into a donor egg or embryo that has healthy mitochondria but the rest of its key DNA removed.
The latest research “marks an important milestone,” said Dr. Zev Williams, who directs the Columbia University Fertility Center and was not involved in the work. “Expanding the range of reproductive options … will empower more couples to pursue safe and healthy pregnancies.”
The Associated Press
