Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day, but we will be back at it on Tuesday. Here are the latest developments:
Facing a House vote on Tuesday on a bill that would require the justice department to release files on Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender Donald Trump socialized with for more than 15 years, the president said that he had noting to hide, despite the fact that he is currently hiding the files from the public. “We’ll give them everything,” Trump said. “I would let them, let the Senate look at it, let anybody look at it”.
Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman from California, said in an interview with Pod Save America that he now expects his bill to compel the release the Epstein files to be passed by the Senate soon after a House vote scheduled for Tuesday.
Senator Elizabeth Warren told CNN that Harvard University should cut ties with its former president, Larry Summers, over his newly released emails to Epstein.
As he prepares to host Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Trump told reporters that he plans to approve the sale of F-35 fighter jets to the Saudis, despite reported concerns from US intelligence that the Saudis could give China access to the technology.
The Trump administration filed a lawsuit on Monday challenging California’s new laws that ban federal officers from wearing masks and requiring them to have identification while operating in the state
Trump tried, but failed, to mock Joe Biden by making a jumbled reference to Biden jumbling his words.
Updated
The 'Trump plan' for Gaza leaves the fertile land in Israeli control
As our colleagues Julian Borger and Patrick Wintour report, “The UN security council has endorsed proposals put forward by Donald Trump for a lasting peace in Gaza, including the deployment of an international stabilisation force and a possible path to a sovereign Palestinian state.”
But the Guardian’s chief Middle East correspondent, Emma Graham-Harrison, reported last week that the Trump administration seems to be planning for reconstruction only in the 53% of Gaza still under Israeli military control.
“The US is planning for the long-term division of Gaza into a ‘green zone’ under Israeli and international military control, where reconstruction would start, and a ‘red zone’ to be left in ruins. Foreign forces will initially deploy alongside Israeli soldiers in the east of Gaza, leaving the devastated strip divided by the current Israeli-controlled ‘yellow line’, according to US military planning documents seen by the Guardian and sources briefed on American plans.”
Eyal Weizman, the director of the research agency Forensic Architecture, explained last month in a post on X that the location of the yellow line between those red and green zones is significant, since it appears to divide Gaza into two parts: one made up of fertile land, to remain under Israeli control, and the other made up of sand dunes, which will make it impossible for the Palestinian population confined there to grow its own food.
(One note on Weizman’s annotation of his map of showing the yellow line: as he pointed out to the Guardian, his caption includes a typo. It should read “east” of the yellow line “are Gaza’s fertile soils,” not “west.”
A line of Israeli military outposts (in yellow dots) forming along the crest of a sandstone ridge overlooking the ‘Yellow Line’ closely to the west. The soil between the ‘Yellow Line’ and the coast, as the image shows, is predominantly dunes, west of it are Gaza’s fertile soils. pic.twitter.com/5wOcNMRxei
— eyal weizman (@weizman_eyal) October 27, 2025
Weizman, who was born in Israel but is now based in London and Berlin, added in a second post on this annotated map that the new border between Israeli-controlled territory and Palestinian-controlled land effectively reduces the area of the Gaza Strip as it was defined in 1948 by cutting off its eastern half.
“The architecture of occupation has simply shifted one ridge westwards,” he wrote.
In 1948 Palestinians were kettled into an enclave by a line of settlements on top of the third sandstone ridge (white dots) overlooking the Armistice Line (white line) along the western slopes of this ridge. The architecture of occupation has simply shifted one ridge westwards. pic.twitter.com/OFE0YKLjyy
— eyal weizman (@weizman_eyal) October 27, 2025
In remarks last year, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who helped negotiate the current ceasefire map, suggested that “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable”. While the current sub-division of the strip leaves that “property” in Palestinian hands, for now, it is obviously less valuable without access to the agricultural lands it is now cut off from.
