Trump Desperately Tries to Kill Petition to Release Epstein Files

President Donald Trump’s administration warned Republicans Tuesday that voting to release more files on Jeffrey Epstein would be seen as an act of war.

Republican Representative Thomas Massie is leading the charge on moving for a House vote to release the Epstein files in full, following the GOP-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s lackluster release of more than 33,000 documents on the child sex offender Tuesday night, 97 percent of which had already been made public.

Representatives Massie and Ro Khanna had previously introduced a bipartisan bill in July to get the Justice Department to release the full cache of the Epstein files within a month. Then, on Tuesday, Massie filed a discharge petition.

The White House was less than pleased.

“Helping Thomas Massie and Liberal Democrats with their attention-seeking, while the DOJ is fully supporting a more comprehensive file release effort from the Oversight Committee, would be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration,” a White House official said in a statement to CNN.

Massie has already managed to secure signatures for the petition from some of the biggest firebrand Republican representatives, including Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Their support means Massie needs only two more signatures to force a vote.

“There’s a major pressure campaign from the White House right now, and also from the speaker,” Massie said on Tuesday. “But I think there are enough Republicans who are listening to their constituents and care about these victims that we’ll get the 218 signatures we need.”

In her latest seeming appeasement to President Donald Trump amid his federal takeover of Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser on Tuesday ordered that the city work with federal law enforcement indefinitely.

With the one-month limit (sans congressional approval) on Trump’s takeover approaching, Bowser issued an executive order stating that D.C. will “ensure coordination with federal law enforcement to the maximum extent allowable by law within the District.” The order also requires that D.C. “continue to communicate its priorities to federal counterparts and other ways the federal government can assist the District.”

No expiration date is provided for the directive, which the Democratic mayor described as a “pathway forward beyond” Trump’s dubiously grounded 30-day crime emergency.

Trump is already delighted by Bowser’s order, a White House official told The Washington Post, and the president described the D.C. mayor as “very helpful,” in a press conference Tuesday.

While Bowser’s order takes a largely warm stance on the takeover, it does lay out plans to “advance requests” that “federal partners” make efforts to “maintain community confidence in law enforcement,” including by not wearing masks to conceal their identities—a practice that has, thus far, seemingly persisted despite Bowser’s objections.

Bowser has faced criticism for her increasingly conciliatory approach to Trump’s takeover, which is opposed by eight in 10 D.C. residents, according to a Washington Post poll last month. At a press conference last week, Bowser said she “greatly appreciate[s] the surge of officers.”

Prior to Bowser’s executive order Tuesday, a coalition of progressive groups in Washington, D.C., wrote a letter criticizing her perceived embrace of Trump’s occupation. “Your talk about crime fighting and crime rates only lends credence to the federal overreach, invites future attempts to degrade our home rule, and feeds a narrative that dehumanizes our neighbors and puts them at greater risk,” they wrote.

“History is calling upon you to lead our people, not to cower in the face of an authoritarian who does not have our best interests in mind,” the letter continued. “There is no strategy in appeasement, only the reality that the more we give, the more they will take.”

President Donald Trump ended his press conference in a huff Tuesday, after snapping at a reporter who asked him about his administration’s legal loss in California.

The journalist asked the president to respond to a federal judge’s ruling that the Trump administration’s decision to deploy the National Guard to Los Angeles had blatantly violated the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, an act prohibiting the use of the U.S. military to execute domestic law.

“Well, it was a radical left judge, but—very importantly—what did you not tell me in that question, or statement, that you made?” Trump asked, muttering a bit to himself.

“Well, I was asking for your response,” the reporter said.

“No, no, you didn’t say what the judge said though,” Trump said. “The judge said, ‘But you can leave the 300 people that you already have in place, they can continue to be in place.’ That’s all we need. But why didn’t you put that as part of your statement?”

Trump appeared desperate to reframe the judge’s ruling as a victory instead of a defeat, and was defensive that the simple question hadn’t aligned with that framing.

“’Cause, the judge, the same judge, ruled exactly as you said, except the judge said that you could leave the 300 people that you already have in place, they can stay, they can remain, they can do what they have to do,” Trump continued, before abruptly dismissing the reporters from the press conference to which he’d arrived an hour late.

The president was referring to U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruling that the Trump administration was not required to withdraw 300 National Guard troops already stationed in Los Angeles but that the government could not use them as it had, to “set up protective perimeters and traffic blockades, engage in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrate a military presence in and around Los Angeles.”

The judge barred the administration from using the military in California “to execute the laws, including but not limited to engaging in arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation, or acting as informants” in ways that violate the Posse Comitatus Act. He gave the Trump administration until noon on September 12 to comply.

Acting U.S. attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli gave no indication that the Trump administration planned to abide by the judge’s ruling, claiming that federal agents had needed protection from “thugs” supported by Democratic officials.

This weekend, the internet hummed with rumors that President Donald Trump, 79, had died. The half-joking gossip was spurred by a week-long stretch with no public appearances, as well as comments by Vice President JD Vance about his readiness to assume the presidency should a “terrible tragedy” occur.

Trump on Tuesday was asked about the speculation by Fox News reporter Peter Doocy, in the president’s first public appearance since then: a press conference during which he seemed his usual self—although the back of his right hand (which has received increasing attention of late for a recurring bruise, often covered with ill-matched concealer) did appear discolored.

“How did you find out over the weekend that you were dead?” Doocy asked—as the president remained silent and his gaze darted to the right. “You see that?” Doocy followed up, to which Trump replied, “No.”

Trump was clued in by the reporter, as Vance could be seen smiling over the president’s shoulder.

In response, Trump claimed that former President Joe Biden had evaded scrutiny for a lack of public appearances, before saying he’d had an “active” weekend, with media appearances, including a Friday interview (published Monday) with conservative news site The Daily Caller; posts to his Truth Social account (“long Truths, and I think pretty poignant Truths,” he said); and a trip to his Virginia golf club.

“I’ve been very active, actually, over the weekend. I didn’t hear that one. That’s pretty serious stuff,” he continued, before blaming the mainstream media for the rumors that were, in reality, driven largely by random social media users.

“Well, it’s fake news,” the president went on. “You know, it’s just so—it’s so fake. That’s why the media has so little credibility. I knew they were saying, like, ‘Is he OK? How’s he feeling? What’s wrong?’ I said, ‘I just—left.’ And it’s also sort of a longer weekend, you know. It’s Labor Day weekend, so I would say a lot of people—No, I was very active this Labor Day. I had heard that, but I didn’t hear it to that extent.”

Trump did not explain the bruise on his hand.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is replacing immigration judges with hundreds of military lawyers, following the Trump administration’s monthslong purge of immigration courts.

Hegseth approved more than 600 military lawyers from the Department of Defense to serve as temporary immigration judges, nearly doubling the ranks of jurists overseeing the president’s massive deportation efforts, the Associated Press reported Tuesday. It’s a move that indicates the Trump administration was simply clearing house to install its own ranks of loyalist judges, intent on seeing the president’s deportations through.

A memo dated August 27 said that the military would begin dispatching batches of 150 attorneys to the Justice Department “as soon as practicable” and have an initial group identified by next week. Appointments would last no longer than 179 days, expiring in February, but they can be renewed.

Since President Donald Trump entered office, a series of departures and firings have left only roughly 600 immigration judges to oversee the nation’s 71 immigration courts and handle a backlog of 3.7 million cases—and the number increases every day.

Most recently in July, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers claimed that another 17 immigration judges had been fired “without cause.” In February, Kerry Doyle, a longtime immigration attorney, who was part of an upcoming class of immigration judges who were all dismissed, alleged that her dismissal was politically motivated.

As a result of the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, the number of people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement has reached an all-time high. At the end of August, a record number of 61,226 people were detained by ICE, and 70 percent of them did not have criminal convictions.