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In today’s episode of Today in Focus, my colleague and Guardian Washington DC bureau chief David Smith reports on the Donald Trump’s troubles over the Jeffrey Epstein case, and how the president risks alienating his own base.
Trump has peddled many conspiracy theories in his time. From the baseless smear that Barack Obama was not a US citizen, to the claim that Trump did not lose the 2020 election, to ones even more far-fetched than that.
But, as David tells Nosheen Iqbal, there is one conspiracy theory Trump may come to regret.
For when Epstein – his estranged friend and child sex offender – died in prison awaiting trial in 2019, Trump suggested that perhaps he had not died by suicide at all … that something far more nefarious was going on in order to protect the rich and powerful whom Epstein had been partying with for decades.
In the years since, “Release the Epstein Files” has been a rallying call for the online right, not least among Trump’s Maga base. In particular, they have called for the publication of Epstein’s “client list” – a roll-call of the elite supposedly implicated in Epstein’s crimes.
Yet since coming to office, the president seems to have changed his tune, with his administration insisting in the last few weeks that no such list exists, and that there was nothing suspicious about Epstein’s death.
It has seemingly enraged some of the president’s own supporters, who have accused Trump of being part of a deep-state cover up – and questioned just how involved Trump was with Epstein after all.
You can listen to the episode here:
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‘He can do anything to anyone’: South Park targets Paramount after signing $1.5bn deal and skewers Trump
Jenna Amatulli
South Park has kicked off its 27th season with a blistering episode taking aim at Donald Trump and its newly minted parent company, Paramount, just one day after signing a $1.5bn deal with the network.
The premiere episode, “Sermon on the Mount,” sees Trump in bed with series regular Satan and covers topics including Trump’s lawsuit against Paramount, the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, wokeness, Trump’s attacks on Canada and more.
Unlike other characters, Trump is depicted as an actual photo of the US president on an animated body. There is also an extended scene featuring a hyper-realistic, deepfake video of Trump, completely naked, walking in a desert. There are repeated suggestions that Trump’s genitalia are small.
The episode centers on the presence of Jesus in South Park’s schools, a story covered by a parody of 60 Minutes, in a clear satire of Paramount’s recent embroilment with Trump over the flagship CBS News show. The two hosts refer nervously to “the president, who is a great man” and who “is probably watching”.
When South Park’s parents protest to Trump that they don’t want Jesus in schools, and Trump threatens to sue them for $5bn, Jesus begs them to settle with the president. “I didn’t want to come back and be in the school, but I had to because it was part of a lawsuit and the agreement with Paramount,” Jesus says through gritted teeth.
“You guys saw what happened to CBS? Well, guess who owns CBS? Paramount. You really want to end up like Colbert? You guys got to stop being stupid… He also has the power to sue and take bribes and he can do anything to anyone. It’s the fucking president, dude… South Park is over.”
The townspeople eventually agree to pay Trump a much smaller $3.5m, but also must create “pro-Trump messaging” – leading to the aforementioned video of Trump wandering in a desert, stripping naked.
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Trump says he wants Musk and his companies to thrive in US
Donald Trump has said he would not destroy Elon Musk’s companies by taking away federal subsidies and that he wants the billionaire tech-entrepreneur’s businesses to thrive.
“Everyone is stating that I will destroy Elon’s companies by taking away some, if not all, of the large scale subsidies he receives from the U.S. Government. This is not so!,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “I want Elon, and all businesses within our Country, to THRIVE.”
It follows Musk’s warning to Tesla investors on Wednesday that US government cuts in support for electric vehicle makers could lead to a “few rough quarters” for the company.
Musk spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help Trump win November’s presidential election and led the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency”’s chaotic effort to slash the budget and cut the federal workforce.
The Tesla CEO left the Trump administration in late May to refocus on his tech empire, after his foray into US politics dramatically tarnished his global reputation.
Trump and Musk fell out in spectacular fashion shortly afterward when Musk openly denounced the president’s sweeping tax-cut and spending bill, leading to threats by Trump to cancel billions of dollars worth of federal government contracts with Musk’s companies.
Musk’s SpaceX had been considered a frontrunner to build out Trump’s $175bn Golden Dome missile defense shield and remains a natural choice for key elements of the project.
But sources familiar with the matter told Reuters earlier this week that the administration is expanding its search for partners to build Golden Dome as tensions with Musk threaten SpaceX’s dominance in the program.
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Updated at 10.58 EDT
White House tightens grip on Epstein messaging
“Donald Trump and his aides have settled on silence as a strategy to stamp out criticism” of the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, a senior administration official and Republicans familiar with the White House’s thinking have told NBC News.
With the story refusing to die, Trump appears to have switched gears away from a strategy that would usually see his administration officials robustly defending him to the media. Instead, he has signaled that he doesn’t want members of his administration talking about Epstein nonstop, a person close to the White House told NBC.
“And White House aides have made it clear that no one in the administration is allowed to talk about Epstein without high-level vetting, according to a senior administration official,” per NBC’s report.
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‘Extortion scheme’: Columbia’s deal with White House met with mixed reactions
Alice Speri
Columbia University’s long anticipated deal with the Trump administration after months of negotiations has drawn both condemnation and praise from faculty, students, and alumni – a sign that the end of negotiations will hardly restore harmony on a campus profoundly divided since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza.
The deal will reinstate $400m in federal funds the administration cut from the university after it accused it of allowing antisemitism to fester on campus. But it will cost Columbia some $220m in legal settlements, as well as a host of new measures that critics warn significantly restrict the university’s independence and will further repress pro-Palestinian speech.
The agreement – the government’s first with one of dozens of universities it has accused of enabling antisemitism and threatened with funding cuts and other measures – is likely to have major repercussions on academic freedom in the US and future relations between higher education institutions and an administration that has described them as “the enemy”.
David Pozen, a professor at Columbia Law School, slammed the deal as giving “legal form to an extortion scheme”, he wrote.
The means being used to push through these reforms are as unprincipled as they are unprecedented. Higher education policy in the United States is now being developed through ad hoc deals, a mode of regulation that is not only inimical to the ideal of the university as a site of critical thinking but also corrosive to the democratic order and to law itself.
“Columbia is choosing to pander to a lawless administration to restore their federal funding – instead of protecting the rights of its students and faculty who are bravely speaking out against a genocide,” said Sabiya Ahamed, a staff attorney at Palestine Legal who has worked with several Columbia students facing disciplinary measures.
Columbia is abdicating its mission as a center of learning, and agreeing to operate like an arm of the state to censor and punish speech the Trump administration doesn’t like. With its newly announced policies, Columbia is threatening to bulldoze over the rights of all of its Palestinian and associated students to an even greater degree than before.
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Trump visit to Scotland expected to be met with wave of protest
Libby Brooks and Peter Walker
Scottish protest organisers anticipate a wave of resistance to Donald Trump from Ayrshire to Aberdeenshire this weekend as Scots take to the streets to express “widespread anger” at what they termed the US president’s increasingly extreme policies.
Trump t is expected to arrive in Scotland tomorrow for a five-day private visit to his luxury golf resorts at Turnberry in Ayrshire and Menie in Aberdeenshire.
While it is not a formal trip, Keir Starmer will hold talks in Scotland with Trump on Monday. No press conference is scheduled, but the media (not the Wall Street Journal) are expected to attend the start of the discussions.
The Stop Trump Coalition is organising events in Aberdeen in the city centre and outside the US consulate in Edinburgh on Saturday at midday – similar gatherings during Trump’s visit to Scotland in 2018 attracted thousands of protesters.
Along with the two main city gatherings, protests are expected around Turnberry and Menie, where Trump is expected to open a new 18-hole golf course named in honour of his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, who was born on the Isle of Lewis.
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Updated at 08.49 EDT
Justice department meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell set for today
A senior justice department official is expected to meet today with Ghislaine Maxwell in Tallahassee, Florida, ABC News reported last night.
Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s close associate, is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking, among other crimes, in Tallahassee.
The justice department said on Tuesday that the meeting between deputy attorney general Todd Blanche and Maxwell would take place “in the coming days”.
“President Trump has told us to release all credible evidence. If Ghislane Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say,” Blanche said in a statement posted by attorney general Pam Bondi on X on Tuesday.
Maxwell’s attorney confirmed that day that they were in discussions with the government about the visit, saying in a statement: “Ghislaine will always testify truthfully.”
Yesterday her brother Ian Maxwell told the New York Post that she is preparing “new evidence” ahead of the meeting. But there are substantial doubts about her veracity, Politico notes.
Among those voicing concern is House speaker Mike Johnson, who yesterday appeared to cast doubt on his own party’s movement toward subpoenaing Maxwell to testify. Referring to past justice department allegations that she is a pervasive liar, he asked: “Can she be counted on to tell the truth … can we trust what she’s going to say?”
Indeed since the DOJ announcement of the meeting, suggestions have arisen about her potential motives, given that Donald Trump has the power to pardon or commute her sentence.
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Updated at 09.06 EDT
The Guardian has been keeping up with the changing abortion laws across the US since Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022.
You can see the latest state-by-state breakdown here:
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Updated at 07.53 EDT
Here’s more context from the Associated Press on its new poll about abortion:
The June 2022 supreme court ruling that overturned Roe v Wade and opened the door to state bans on abortion led to major policy changes.
Most states have either moved to protect abortion access or restrict it. Twelve are now enforcing bans on abortion at every stage of pregnancy, and four more do so after about six weeks’ gestation, which is often before women realize they’re pregnant.
In the aftermath of the ruling, AP-NORC polling suggested that support for legal abortion access might be increasing.
Last year, an AP-NORC poll conducted in June found that 7 in 10 US adults said it should be available in all or most cases, up slightly from 65% in May 2022, just before the decision that overruled the constitutional right to abortion, and 57% in June 2021.
The new poll is closer to Americans’ views before the supreme court ruled. Now, 64% of adults support legal abortion in most or all cases. More than half the adults in states with the most stringent bans are in that group.
Similarly, about half now say abortion should be available in their state when someone doesn’t want to continue their pregnancy for any reason — about the same as in June 2021 but down from about 6 in 10 who said that in 2024.
Adults in the strictest states are just as likely as others to say abortion should be available in their state to women who want to end pregnancies for any reason.
Democrats support abortion access far more than Republicans do. Support for legal abortion has dropped slightly among members of both parties since June 2024, but nearly 9 in 10 Democrats and roughly 4 in 10 Republicans say abortion should be legal in at least most instances.
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Most US adults support legal abortion three years after Roe overturn, new poll finds
Good morning, and welcome to the US politics blog.
Today we’re kicking off with the findings of a new poll: three years after the US supreme court opened the door to state abortion bans, most adults continue to say abortion should be legal — views that look similar to before the landmark ruling.
The new findings from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll show that about two-thirds of US adults think abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
About half believe abortion should be available in their state if someone does not want to be pregnant for any reason. That level of support for abortion is down slightly from what an AP-NORC poll showed last year, when it seemed that support for legal abortion might be rising.
Other things to note in US politics today:
Stick with us today as we bring you all the US politics news to come.
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