Closing summary
With the president ensconced in his Scottish golf resort for the night, ahead of what he assures us will be not just a long weekend of golf, but “many meetings”, we are wrapping up our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are the latest developments:
After Donald Trump reminded everyone that he is “allowed to” pardon Ghislaine Maxwell, a former associate of his who was convicted of conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to recruit, groom and sexually abuse girls, Maxwell’s lawyer suggested that Trump might be sympathetic to the argument that her conviction was unjust.
Trump is in Scotland, where he is spending the weekend at his golf resorts, and dodging questions about his long friendship with Epstein.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) is preparing to send $608m to states to construct immigrant detention centers as part of the Trump administration’s push to expand capacity to hold migrants.
California congressmen Ro Khanna and Robert Garcia on Friday sent a formal request to attorneys representing the estate of Jeffrey Epstein, demanding the release of a 2003 “birthday book” that reportedly contains a signed greeting from Donald Trump to the late sex offender.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful pro-Israel lobbying group known as Aipac, accused Bernie Sanders, the nation’s most prominent Jewish politician, of a ‘blood libel’ on Friday for his statement denouncing what he called “the Netanyahu government’s extermination of Gaza”.
US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr is reportedly planning to remove all the members of an advisory panel that determines what cancer screenings and other preventive health measures insurers must cover, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“Kennedy plans to dismiss all 16 panel members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force because he views them as too ‘woke’”, unnamed sources familiar with the plan told the Journal.
A spokesperson for the health and human services department told Reuters that Kennedy had not yet made a decision regarding the 16-member US Preventive Services Task Force. “No final decision has been made on how the USPSTF can better support HHS’ mandate to Make America Healthy Again,” the spokesperson said.
In June, Kennedy, a long-time vaccine skeptic, fired all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a panel of vaccine experts, replacing them with seven handpicked members, including anti-vaxers.
The USPSTF includes medical experts serving staggered four-year terms on a volunteer basis. Its role in choosing what services will be covered by insurers was established under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
“USPTF offers recommendations for preventative health measures like breast, colon, and prostate cancer screening, aspirin use, etc. It’s a nonpartisan panel”, Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine at George Washington University, posted in response to the report. “Every recommendation is preceded with this statement: ‘Recommendations made by the USPSTF are independent of the U.S. government. They should not be construed as an official position of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.’ Will it remain independent of HHS?”
