Closing summary
This brings our real-time chronicle of the second Trump administration to a close for the day. We will be back at it on Friday. Here are the latest developments:
Donald Trump spent much of the day out of public view, holding only one event, and taking no questions from reporters eager to ask him about emails from Jeffrey Epstein, the late sex offender he socialized with for more than a decade. The president has no public events at all on his schedule for Friday, before he flies to Florida for a weekend out of the spotlight.
In a social media post, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, announced “Operation Southern Spear”, which he called new military mission that “removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere.” The announcement, accompanied by no details at all, raised concerns that war on Venezuela might be imminent. The defense secretary seemed unaware that the Navy had already announced a mission with the same name in January.
The Trump administration is suing California governor Gavin Newsom after the state adopted new congressional maps last week.
The federal government reopened today, after a record-breaking shutdown that lasted almost 43 days.
A federal judge in Virginia said she would rule by Thanksgiving on claims that the former White House aid turned prosecutor who indicted former FBI director James Comey and New York attorney general Letitia James was unlawfully appointed.
John Fetterman, the Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, has been hospitalized after a fall during an early morning walk.
Perhaps eager to show that he is not, entirely, staying out of the public spotlight as questions about his relationship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein spread, Donald Trump just posted his first “truths” of the day, a pair of posts on his social network urging his fans to buy new books by Fox News contributors who are also his fans.
Both posts has a pre-cooked air about them, since they were recommendations of books Trump had already recommended previously, and were both posted at the same time, 8:55pm in Washington.
First, Trump praised a book by the former FBI agent Nicole Parker. Parker, who visited Trump in the Oval Office on Monday, told Fox & Friends on Thursday morning: “James Comey single-handedly destroyed the agency that I loved.”
In the very same minute, he posted a second book recommendation, praising a book by the former wrestler Tyrus, a frequent guest on the Fox late-night show Gutfeld! that Trump had already recommended in September.
So, for Trump fans, Thursday was a day without new truths.
