Closing summary
This ends our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. We’ll be back on Wednesday. Here are some of the day’s developments:
The US senator John Cornyn of Texas asked the FBI to aid Texas law enforcement in locating and arresting Democrats who left the state to forestall a plan sought by Donald Trump to aggressively redraw the state’s congressional map in a way that could help Republicans keep their House majority after the 2026 midterm elections. Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, announced that he had filed an emergency petition with the state supreme court seeking to remove from office state representative Gene Wu, chair of the House Democratic caucus, who has sought refuge in Illinois. More here.
The long-running scandal surrounding the disgraced late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein broadened after the New York Times published a trove of previously unseen letters to Epstein from numerous powerful figures as well as unseen photographs from inside his Manhattan mansion. The letters, written to Epstein by a number of high-profile individuals, were reportedly compiled as a birthday gift for Epstein’s 63rd birthday in 2016. More here.
The House oversight committee issued subpoenas to Bill and Hillary Clinton as well as several former attorneys general and directors of the FBI, demanding “testimony related to horrific crimes perpetrated by Jeffrey Epstein”. The investigative committee’s Republican chair, James Comer, sent the subpoenas in response to two motions lawmakers approved on a bipartisan basis last month, as Congress navigated outrage among Donald Trump’s supporters over the justice department’s announcement that it would not release further details about Epstein, a disgraced financier who died in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking. Here’s the full story.
The US attorney general, Pam Bondi, is said to be ordering prosecutors to present evidence to a grand jury investigating the origins of the FBI’s Trump-Russia inquiry, according to the Associated Press. The criminal probe follows referrals from Trump administration intelligence officials and targets the investigation that established Moscow interfered in the 2016 election on Donald Trump’s behalf, a source who spoke on condition of anonymity told the AP. More here.
Updated
The Texas house of representatives remained without a quorum after the state’s Democratic lawmakers fled the state capital to prevent the legislature from adopting a Republican-backed plan for redrawing Texas congressional districts.
The Texas house speaker, Dustin Burrows, signed civil arrest warrants for the wayward Democrats – most of whom have gone to Illinois, New York or Massachusetts – to be brought back to Austin.
ICYMI, here’s a recap of some of today’s events:
