2025-12-07 04:55:41
A Trump-appointed federal judge in Florida has ordered the public release of grand jury transcripts from the first federal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of underage girls, which took place during the mid-2000s.
That investigation ended without any charges. In 2007, however, federal prosecutors in Florida did indict Epstein, who managed to obtain a plea deal, copping to relatively minor charges of procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute. He was given an 18-month sentence in the Palm Beach County Jail—with daytime work release—and served about 13 months.
Back in July, a different judge, at the request of the Trump administration, had declined to demand release of records from the earlier investigation. On Friday, however, US District Judge Rodney Smith, whom Trump appointed to the bench in 2018, stated that the Epstein Files Transparency Act that President Donald Trump signed into law on November 19, “overrides” rules that prohibit the public disclosure of “unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials”—including grand jury transcripts.
This same law compels the Department of Justice, federal prosecutors, and the FBI to release, by mid-December, materials they collected during their investigations into Epstein going back at least as far as the mid-2000s Florida case. The DOJ has not yet announced a timeline for making the information publicly available.
Earlier this year, three federal judges denied DOJ requests to unseal the federal grand jury transcripts. US District Judge Richard Berman framed the effort as a “diversion” strategy to distract from the agency’s slow-rolling of its own Epstein files: “The information contained in the Epstein grand jury transcripts pales in comparison to the Epstein investigation information and materials in the hands of the Department of Justice,” he wrote.
DOJ officials are now attempting to unseal materials from three different Epstein investigations. The Trump administration has asked two New York judges for grand jury transcripts from Epstein’s 2019 sex-trafficking case and Ghislaine Maxwell’s 2021 trial.
The state courts are now weighing privacy concerns from survivors and witnesses. The Epstein Files Transparency Act lists exemptions that may allow the DOJ to redact records that could result in personal identification.
The New York judges are expected to issue their decisions next week.
2025-12-07 02:48:36
The Indiana House voted on Friday to redraw the state’s congressional map with the aim to produce a 9-0 Republican delegation.
Lawmakers approved the redistricting proposal 57-41, despite 12 Republicans joining the entire Democratic House caucus in opposition. The bill now goes to the state Senate, where the outcome is unclear. Republican leadership has insisted for months that they do not have the votes to pass it. But President Donald Trump, who has asked Republican-led states to redistrict, has been putting the heat on holdout legislators.
According to the Indiana Capital Chronicle, at least 14 of 40 Republican senators have publicly voiced disagreement with the new map. Indiana has 10 Democratic senators, which leaves the tally roughly equal—for now.
On Friday night, Trump weighed in with a vaguely mob boss-style social media post calling on his followers to pressure the stragglers: “I am hearing that these nine Senators, some of whom are up for Re-Election in 2026, and some in 2028, need encouragement to make the right decision: Blake Doriot, Brett Clark, Brian Buchanan, Dan Dernulc, Ed Charbonneau, Greg Goode, Jim Buck, Rick Niemeyer, and Ryan Mishler. Let your voice be heard loud and clear in support of these Senators doing the right thing.”
This comes after at least 11 Indiana Republicans were the targets of swatting or other threats following a November Trump Truth Social campaign against the state’s reluctant GOP.
Indiana is just one of several states wrapped up in Trump’s redistricting crusade. On Thursday, the Supreme Court permitted Texas to use its new map in the 2026 midterm elections, which could hand Republicans five new seats. Missouri and North Carolina have also passed new maps that could enable the party to gain a seat in each state.
Florida may be next up, as lawmakers held a hearing on Thursday to consider redistricting. Florida has a constitutional amendment that prohibits gerrymandering, but Gov. Ron DeSantis said earlier in the week that the new map should be drawn in the spring so that the inevitable court debate could factor in a possible Supreme Court ruling in a Louisiana redistricting case that would further weaken the Voting Rights Act.
Democrats are countering with their own map in California, and are beginning efforts in Virginia with the potential to flip two seats from red to blue.
Mid-decade drawings are relatively rare. According to the Pew Research Center, previous to this election cycle, only two states have passed new maps since 1970 for partisan gains on their own—Texas in 2003 and Georgia in 2005. Most other redistricting took place because courts threw out maps for legal violations.
This recent swell of gerrymandering is just one way the Trump administration is attempting to influence—and rig—the 2026 election. It has, for example, weaponized the Justice Department to pursue dubious claims of voter fraud to suppress specific voting groups. Notes my Mother Jones colleague Ari Berman, who has written extensively on the topic: “The sheer volume of threats to democracy can feel so overwhelming that some people may choose not to vote for fear that their ballot will not matter. And that may be part of Trump’s plan.”
2025-12-06 20:30:00
This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
For a moment, Jacob Hannah saw an unprecedented opportunity to make Appalachia great again.
In 2022, the Biden administration earmarked billions of dollars to help revitalize and strengthen former coal communities. The objective was to lay down building blocks for the region to transition from extractive industries like coal and timber to a hub for solar and other advanced energy technologies, with a view to long-term economic, climate and social resilience.
But on his first day in office, Donald Trump scrapped Biden’s clean energy and environmental programs, which he lambasted as woke, anti-American, liberal hoaxes.
“We knew we were living in a historic moment, not just because of the amount of funding, but because the whole region mobilized to meet the moment,” said Hannah, 33. “It was a once-in-a-generation cash injection designed to prioritize extraction-based communities as part of the energy transition, which for the first time in almost a century made Appalachia very competitive. So to have it all taken away is deeply damaging and demoralizing.”
Hannah, a fifth-generation Appalachian with a bushy beard and signature wide-brimmed hat, has been crisscrossing the country on a mission to raise philanthropic capital to limit the economic damage caused by the Trump administration taking a chainsaw to Biden-era grants.
Hannah runs Coalfield Development, a nonprofit organization headquartered in Huntington, focused on rebuilding Southwest Virginia’s economy and social fabric through workforce training, job creation, and revitalizing abandoned buildings and mines in some of the most forgotten corners of coal country.
Coalfield Development has trained more than 4,000 people—including many formerly incarcerated and/or in addiction recovery—over the past 15 years in everything from solar installation to drywalling and first aid. Yet, historically, federal grants for community regeneration efforts in Appalachia have been mostly top-down, project-based and short-lived.
The 2022 cash injection came through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Biden’s landmark climate and infrastructure legislation, and was designed to help revitalize and strengthen former coal communities over the long haul.
“These are not frivolous things: these are basic services.”
It was the largest investment in Appalachia since the 1960s’ “war on poverty” under Lyndon Johnson.
In response, Coalfield Development spearheaded a coalition of universities, unions, nonprofits, businesses, and local governments to create collective infrastructure and capacity, enabling coal-affected rural communities across the US access to more than $900 million of the historic IRA investment.
Rural communities in Appalachia were on the verge of breaking ground on projects when the grants were paused or terminated by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by the billionaire Trump donor Elon Musk. The wholesale cull included the $3 billion Environmental and Climate Justice Program created in the IRA to tackle the climate crisis and environmental harms at a local level.
A few grants have since been reinstated, but are subject to long delays—in part because so many staff at federal agencies were forced out by DOGE. Many remain the subject of litigation. Every single grant Coalfield Development was helping coordinate has been affected in some way.
The cuts have deepened existing mistrust in government, known colloquially as Appalachian fatalism, yet many of those interviewed by the Guardian blame Washington politics generally rather than Trump.
“This party has taken away that funding from Appalachia illegally: That’s the stone-cold fact. But by the time those facts reach communities on the ground, it’s just so muddy. I think some are asking questions about why training is being shut down and why they didn’t get their SNAP [food assistance] benefits, but where they’ll find the answers is the big issue,” said Hannah.
Huntington, the second largest city in West Virginia with 45,000 residents, was perhaps a perfect place to build a coalition for the massive IRA investment across coal country. Located on the Ohio river, it was once a major transportation hub for the region’s coalfields, but suffered major economic and social decline as the surrounding mines shut down—and then became an epicenter of the opioid epidemic.
It sits at the heart of the Bible belt, which once voted loyally with Democrats but like many blue-collar regions is now part of the loyal MAGA base who believed Trump when he pledged to resuscitate coal country and put America first.
Trump has won big in West Virginia in the past three general elections, securing every county in 2024 with an average of 70 percent of the vote—the highest percentage any party has won in the state’s history. His vote share was even larger in rural counties including Clay and Wayne, which Huntington straddles.
The Guardian’s visit coincided with the Democrats drubbing the Republicans in several state elections—including the governor’s race in Virginia.
It was also five weeks into the government shutdown, just days after the Trump administration announced that millions of Americans would not receive food stamps and Tesla shareholders approved a trillion-dollar pay package for Musk.
The damage caused by Trump’s dismantling of Biden-era programs was visible all around Coalfield Development’s redbrick office, which is located in a former manufacturing hub between the rail tracks and the river.
Next door, a multimillion-dollar redevelopment of a sprawling industrial site known as the Black Diamond warehouse has stalled—at first due to grant suspensions and more recently due to the federal shutdown slowing down payments. Coalfield Development is still waiting for close to $3 million in overdue reimbursements.
The warehouse, which once manufactured military planes, jeeps, and coal trains, is being repurposed as a hub for sustainable industries and training. But all six EPA grants for Reuse Corridor, a new social enterprise to salvage and repurpose mattresses, electronics, and other materials frequently dumped in the Ohio River, were cut, effectively killing the business and with it countless job opportunities.
Meanwhile, Solar Holler, a solar developer and installation company with 105 employees across Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, and Virginia, signed up for a new office in the warehouse as the business had been growing 20 percent to 30 percent annually.
But tax incentives for residential solar, which accounted for 70 percent of the company’s business, will be axed at the end of this year thanks to Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget. Commercial tax breaks will end in late 2027.
Solar Holler uses panels made in Georgia, yet Trump’s tariffs and other trade restrictions have caused supply chain delays and pushed up raw material prices across the board, as well as almost doubling the cost of solar energy on the market. The company’s forecast for 2026 is down from 30 percent to “roughly flat.”
“The massive increase in costs ends up being passed down to customers,” said Dan Conant, founder and CEO of Solar Holler. “The IRA rollbacks are obviously disappointing but that said, no matter how hard you make it on the ground for people, solar is the cheapest form of power on the planet so it’s going to happen one way or the other.”
Appalachian Voices is a nonprofit working with local communities—and in Washington, DC—on securing a just energy transition. In 2023, AV, which is part of the broader coalition with Coalfield Development, was awarded a half-million-dollar EPA grant to help five former coal communities in Virginia increasingly being hit by severe floods thanks to the climate crisis and the environmental legacy of mining.
The grant was among those summarily terminated by DOGE. It remains the subject of class-action litigation brought by 350 groups, tribes, and local governments that claim the wholesale termination of the $3 billion environmental justice and climate program is unconstitutional.
“I don’t think people know who or what to trust, because both [political] parties have failed us in big ways.”
In Lee county, where 85 percent of voters opted for Trump and almost half rely on food stamps, AV had earmarked $40,000 for an asbestos survey in Pennington Gap. This was among a stack of grants secured by the community to demolish a derelict supermarket—a concrete, asbestos-ridden eyesore that frequently floods and cuts off neighborhoods from the main town—to create a green space that would mitigate future flooding.
For small communities such as Pennington Gap, securing funding for revitalization projects is like a game of Jenga, and removing just one or two pieces can make the whole stack collapse, according to Emma Kelly, AV’s New Economy program manager. “People in Appalachia are used to being let down by the government, but this time we had the money. It was still taken away, and people feel betrayed.”
A Department of Energy grant that the community hoped to use to install rooftop solar on public buildings that would save $400 or so in monthly energy bills—a reliable income source that could be reinvested in sustainability projects such as communal fruit trees and electric bikes—was also cut.
“Regardless of who’s in power, there’s a lot of finger-pointing, while life gets worse for the common people and the oligarch class keep winning,” said Orville Overton, 34, a local business owner and member of the residents’ council. “I don’t think people know who or what to trust, because both [political] parties have failed us in big ways.”
About 60 miles east, Dante, a sparsely populated former integrated mining community that was once the second largest in Russell county, suffers frequent power outages—including a four-day blackout during a major flood in July, and nine days after Hurricane Helene in August 2024.
Dante’s share of the terminated EPA grant was tagged for a feasibility study on the old railway depot, once the hub of mining operations and the whole town. This is the first step needed to convert the depot into a resilience hub with solar panels and battery storage, a place for residents to charge their phones and keep medication refrigerated during the next blackout.
The post office has been closed since July, due to flood damage. The only place still open for business in Dante is the volunteer-run mining museum.
Dante is also currently without a fire station, after nearly $400,000 appropriated by Congress to replace the one demolished due to subsidence was rescinded by the Trump administration.
“These are not frivolous things; these are basic services. And when you work hard for two or three years to secure federal funds, you expect it to be delivered,” said Lou Ann Wallace, Dante’s representative on the Republican-controlled Russell County Board of Supervisors.
“I don’t think the president knew. I’m one of his biggest supporters, but we’re dealing with the ills of industry here, and we’ve got to be able to clean this up so our people in these hollers can have a quality of life.”
Trump won 83 percent of the vote in Russell county in 2024 while Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican candidate for governor, secured 81 percent last month.
Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, said: “President Trump cares about our miners more than any other president in modern history—which is why he has implemented his energy dominance agenda to protect their jobs and revive the mining industry…we can maintain the safety of miners while simultaneously rolling back Joe Biden’s Green New Scam regulations that were killing their jobs.”
Across Appalachia, people who believe in Trump will be hit hard by his wholesale cuts to Medicaid, Veterans Affairs, food aid, and education, among other public services. Simultaneously, the region is scrambling to save projects that would improve resilience and bring jobs.
It’s a race against the clock, according to Hannah, to find enough money to keep afloat and help people keep faith.
“The funding was committed by Congress, so we know the law’s on our side, and that we will eventually win back some of these grants,” Hannah said. “One objective was probably to remove confidence in the system, so we need to outlast what is a game of cashflow and the battle of morale.”
2025-12-06 16:01:00
Earlier this fall, hundreds of activists from all over the world crowded onto several dozen boats and set sail for Gaza. Their goal: Break through Israel’s blockade of the territory and end one of the worst humanitarian crises on the planet. They thought that by sharing their journey through social media, they could capture the world’s attention.
At first, it was easy to dismiss the Global Sumud Flotilla—until it wasn’t. Before reaching Gaza, the flotilla was attacked by drones, and activists were arrested by the Israeli navy.
“We were at gunpoint; like, you could see the laser on our chest,” says flotilla participant Louna Sbou.
Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.They were then sent to a high-security prison in the middle of the Negev desert.
“You have no control, you have no information, and you have no rights,” says Carsie Blanton, another participant. “They could do whatever they want to you.”
This week on Reveal, we go aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla for a firsthand look at what activists faced on their journey and whether their efforts made any difference.
2025-12-06 02:40:08
A landmark study on the safety of glyphosate, the active ingredient in the controversial herbicide Roundup, has been formally retracted by its publisher, raising new concerns about the chemical’s potential dangers.
Federal regulators have relied heavily on the study, published in 2000 by the science journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, in their assessment that the herbicide is safe and does not cause cancer. Indeed, the paper, which concluded that “Roundup herbicide does not pose a health risk to humans,” was among the most cited studies in government reports.
But the journal’s co-editor-in-chief, Martin van den Berg, said he no longer trusted the study, and that it appears to have been secretly ghostwritten by employees of Monsanto, the company that introduced Roundup in 1974. Officially, the paper’s authors, including a doctor from New York Medical College, were listed as independent scientists.
Van den Berg, a professor of toxicology in the Netherlands, concluded that the paper relied entirely on Monsanto’s internal studies and ignored other evidence suggesting that Roundup might be harmful.
“The MAHA world is losing their minds right now. They keep getting thrown under the bus.”
In 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer determined that glyphosate probably causes cancer. Since then, Roundup’s manufacturer, Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018, has agreed to pay more than $12 billion in legal settlements to people who claim it gave them cancer.
In 2020, the US Environmental Protection Agency released an updated safety assessment on glyphosate that again determined that it was safe and did not cause cancer. This EPA report is often cited in news reports that contend glyphosate is “fine” and important for modern food production.
But those reports failed to mention that the 2020 EPA health assessment was overturned in 2022 by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals. The “EPA’s errors in assessing human-health risk are serious,” the judges wrote, and “most studies EPA examined indicated that human exposure to glyphosate is associated with an at least somewhat increased risk of developing non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma”—a type of cancer.
The court told the EPA it needed to redo its human health assessment, meaning the agency now has no official stance on glyphosate’s risk to people. It is expected to release an updated safety report next year.
During the first Trump administration, Monsanto executives were told they “need not fear any additional regulation from this administration,” according to an internal Monsanto email cited in a Roundup lawsuit in 2019. Monsanto had hired a consultant, according to court documents, who reported back that “a domestic policy adviser at the White House had said, for instance: ‘We have Monsanto’s back on pesticides regulation.’”
“Monsanto’s involvement with the Williams et al paper did not rise to the level of authorship and was appropriately disclosed in the acknowledgments. The listed authors had full control over and approved the study’s manuscript,” Bayer said in a statement issued in response to the retraction. “The consensus among leading regulatory bodies worldwide is that glyphosate can be used safely as directed and is not carcinogenic.”
The retraction comes at an awkward time for the Trump administration, which just this week moved to support the manufacturer, whose potential cancer-related legal costs are now approaching $18 billion. On Tuesday, the US solicitor general asked the Supreme Court to consider a case that could help shield the manufacturer from further lawsuits. Bayer’s stock soared by 14 percent on the news.
Two states—North Dakota and Georgia—have passed laws this year that help shield Bayer from some cancer lawsuits arising from Roundup use. There is a push to enact similar laws in other states and on the federal level.
In July, New Jersey Sen. Corey Booker introduced the Pesticide Injury Accountability Act to push back against these new laws, and ensure that “these chemical companies can be held accountable in federal court for the harm caused by their toxic products.”
Zen Honeycutt, a key voice in the Make America Healthy Again coalition, has endorsed the legislation. Honeycutt is executive director of Moms Across America, which on Wednesday posted to its 144,000 followers on Instagram about the “good” news of the study’s retraction and the “bad” news that the Trump administration had moved to help Bayer in its lawsuits.
“We are calling on all Americans to remind President Trump of his promise to get toxic pesticides out of our food supply and to protect our children from harmful chemicals,” the post read.
Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, which sued the EPA for its 2020 approval of the herbicide, said the glyphosate debate has become a key sticking point between President Trump and his MAHA base. “The MAHA world is losing their minds right now. They keep getting thrown under the bus by this administration,” Donley said. “He’s alienating a crucial voting bloc.”
This article was revised to include an excerpt from Bayer’s response.
2025-12-06 02:37:38
The European Commission announced Friday that it was fining Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, for the equivalent of $140 million, saying his company X had breached Europe’s Digital Services Act. The act, which took effect around the same time Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, is a kind of digital rulebook meant to crack down on illegal or potentially harmful content.
Vice President JD Vance, before the fine was even finalized, slammed the commission, claiming that it was targeting US companies.
“Rumors swirling that the EU commission will fine X hundreds of millions of dollars for not engaging in censorship,” Vance wrote on X Thursday. “The EU should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage.”
“Much appreciated,” Musk responded.
A key aspect of the alleged violation is how Musk handles account verification on his social media site. Musk’s X “allows users to subscribe to a tier of the platform that grants them a badge that had previously signified the person had been vetted and approved by X’s moderators,” the Washington Post reports. The European Commission said this system makes it “difficult for users to judge the authenticity of accounts and content they engage with.”
“This deception,” the body continued, “exposes users to scams, including impersonation frauds, as well as other forms of manipulation by malicious actors.” The commission also said X didn’t provide a transparent advertising repository, as the Digital Services Act requires, and “fell short of an obligation to let researchers access and analyze its public data,” per The Post.
It doesn’t look like Musk will face similar issues in the US.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr claimed on X that, “Europe is fining a successful U.S. tech company for being a successful U.S. tech company.” Musk reposted. “The European Commission’s $140 million fine isn’t just an attack on @X, it’s an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote, adding, “The days of censoring Americans online are over.” Musk endorsed the post with a one word reply: “Absolutely.”
While Musk and his supporters herald X as a bastion for free speech, his tenure in the past few years has been more complicated.
In December 2022, Musk suspended the accounts of several high-profile journalists—from outlets like CNN, The New York Times, and WaPo—after Musk claimed reporters were endangering his safety by sharing information on where his private jets were using publicly available data. “Criticizing me all day long is totally fine, but doxxing my real-time location and endangering my family is not,” Musk posted at the time.
According to self-reported data, from the date of Musk’s takeover to April 13, 2023, the social media site fully or partially complied with 98.8 percent of takedown requests submitted by governments. Turkey was responsible for half of all the takedown requests, followed by Germany at 26 percent and and India at 5 percent, as reported by Al Jazeera.
During the 12-month period before Musk took over the site, Twitter fully complied with 50 percent of these kinds of requests, and partially complied with 42 percent.
Since the EU commission announced the fine, Musk has been using his X page to amplify critiques of the commission’s decision. “Total war on free speech,” one post Musk reposted read. “It’s real simple,” Peter Imanuelsen, a well-known far-right voice in Sweden, began in another, “The EU fined X €120 million because this is where the mainstream media narrative gets exposed.” Musk quoted the post with the 100 emoji.
