Closing summary
This brings our live coverage of the second Trump administration to a close for the day. We will return on Tuesday, but in the meantime, here are the latest developments:
House Democrats and the Wall Street Journal published an image of the 2003 birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender, bearing the name of Donald Trump.
The Republican-led House oversight committee later released the entire birthday album, which was reportedly compiled for Epstein by his former girlfriend, and accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.
The White House press office claimed that Trump’s signature, using examples from 2024, is different from the signature on the 2003 letter, but signatures change with age, and other examples from the period, published by the Wall Street Journal, seem to match the signature on the letter to Epstein.
Mary Trump, the president’s niece and fierce critic of her uncle, wrote: “That’s definitely his signature. Just saying.”
JD Vance, the vice-president who had previously suggested that the letter might not exist, dismissed the new evidence and accused Democrats of smearing Trump.
Another letter in the birthday album mentioned Trump. It was from Joel Pashcow, a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, who made a crude joke about brokering the sale of a woman by Epstein to Trump for $22,500.
The US supreme court overruled a lower court to allow federal immigration agents to proceed with raids in southern California targeting people for possible deportation based on their race or the language they speak.
The supreme court also allowed Trump to fire a commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission, blocking a lower court ruling to reinstate Rebecca Slaughter while the case plays out.
Updated
While there is no evidence yet of the promised Apocalypse Now style assault on Chicago by the president’s “Department of War”, a Fox News reporter announced on Monday that “the surge has begun”.
In a segment that was promoted on social media by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the Fox correspondent, Griff Jenkins, reported that while he was embedded with immigration officers, “we arrested” one man suspected of being an undocumented immigrant.
