The Latest: Grand jury transcripts from abandoned Epstein investigation in Florida ordered released

A federal judge in Florida on Friday ordered the release of grand jury transcripts from the federal sex trafficking cases of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith said the law President Donald Trump recently signed ordering the release of related to the cases overrode a federal rule prohibiting the release of matters before a grand jury.

Meanwhile, a federal vaccine advisory committee voted Friday to end a longstanding recommendation that all U.S. babies get the hepatitis B vaccine on the day they’re born. The shots are widely considered to be a public health success for preventing thousands of liver illnesses. Democrats are pushing for the release of video of the first U.S. military strikes on a boat in the Caribbean that they say shows a war crime or murder. And Trump took center stage at Friday’s 2026 World Cup draw.

The Latest:

Florida’s Republican-dominated congressional delegation is urging the Trump administration to drop a plan that would allow new oil drilling off the state’s coast.

A letter signed by Republican Sens. Rick Scott and Ashley Moody says the Interior Department plan would put the state’s thriving tourism industry at risk and disrupt military operations in a key training area.

The letter to President Donald Trump is signed by all 30 members of Congress from Florida, including 22 Republicans and eight Democrats. It represents rare pushback against the Republican president by GOP lawmakers and demonstrates how important Florida’s beaches and coastal waters are to its economy.

A spokesperson for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has also said the Trump administration should reconsider.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., in an interview with the AP: “When the digital ink is still wet on the deal, I think it would be very premature for someone to say, ‘Over my dead body.’ But rather one should say, ‘Yeah, this one we predicted, if it happened, that it would be a serious concern.’ It has now happened, and that serious concern is going to take some time, effort, and study and possible changes in the deal.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on social media: “This deal looks like an anti-monopoly nightmare. A Netflix-Warner Bros. would create one massive media giant with control of close to half of the streaming market. It could force you into higher prices, fewer choices over what and how you watch, and may put American workers at risk.”

Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., in a statement: “One company should not have full vertical control of the content and the distribution pipeline that delivers it. And combining two of the largest streaming platforms is a textbook horizontal Antitrust problem.”

The rocker surprised journalists in the James Brady Press Briefing Room, where he appeared at the podium and parried away a few questions. His appearance came as Kiss is set to be honored this weekend at the Kennedy Center.

His wife, Shannon Tweed, pleaded with him to stop and eventually led him out of the room by the arm.

Simmons joked to the reporters: “It was wonderful to talk to me,” as he left.

Organizers brought out the Village People to perform “YMCA,” a standard on the setlist of Trump campaign events.

Naturally, Trump, who watched much of the draw from a Kennedy Center balcony, stood up and danced.

Trump’s national security strategy document released Friday lays out, as “a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine,” to “restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.”

The doctrine formulated by President James Monroe in 1823 was originally aimed at opposing any European meddling in the Western Hemisphere, and later used to justify U.S. military interventions across Latin America.

Along with combating drug trafficking and controlling migration, Trump’s document describes a reimagined footprint after building up the largest military presence in the region in generations. That means, for instance, “targeted deployments to secure the border and defeat cartels, including where necessary the use of lethal force to replace the failed law enforcement-only strategy of the last several decades,” it says.

Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, who sits on House committees overseeing intelligence and the armed forces, called the strategy “catastrophic to America’s standing in the world and a retreat from our alliances and partnerships.”

“The world will be a more dangerous place and Americans will be less safe if this plan moves forward,” Crow said.

Three Somali American lawmakers from Maine issued a joint statement criticizing Trump’s remarks about Somali immigrants. Rep. Mana Abdi of Lewiston, Rep. Deqa Dhalac of South Portland and Rep. Yusuf Yusuf of Portland are the first Somali Americans to serve in the Maine House of Representatives.

“An attack on Somali Americans, on TPS holders, or on any immigrant community is an attack on all Americans. Maine is stronger when we stand together, reject dehumanization, and insist on a future rooted in safety, fairness, and shared belonging,” said the statement sent Thursday.

Maine is home to several thousand residents of Somali descent.

The Supreme Court has agreed to take up the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s order on birthright citizenship.

His order says that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily aren’t American citizens. The justices said Friday they will hear Trump’s appeal of a lower court ruling that struck down the citizenship restrictions.

Those restrictions haven’t taken effect anywhere in the country. The case will be argued in the spring. A definitive ruling is expected by early summer. Birthright citizenship is the first Trump immigration-related policy to reach the court for a final ruling. The order is part of his administration’s broad immigration crackdown.

But it could happen later this month.

The government had asked the court for permission to include the usually secret grand jury records in the files they are required to make public under the new federal law. The legislation requires the Justice Department to make the documents public in a searchable and downloadable format within 30 days of Trump signing it into law.

The Indiana state House passed a redistricting bill Friday, advancing the legislation backed by Trump to a high-stakes fight in the state Senate.

The House, with a Republican supermajority, voted 57-41 to pass the proposed congressional map that would split the city of Indianapolis into four districts and set the GOP up to win all nine of the state’s congressional districts.

Republicans currently hold seven of the nine districts. It is unknown whether there are enough votes in the state Senate, which is set to convene on Monday, to give final passage to the map.

The grand jury transcripts involve the federal sex trafficking cases of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith said a recently passed federal law ordering the release of records related to the cases overrode a federal rule prohibiting the release of matters before a grand jury. The Epstein Files Transparency Act, signed last month by Trump, compels the Justice Department, FBI and federal prosecutors to release by Dec. 19 the vast troves of material they’ve amassed during investigations into Epstein.

Other requests to unseal Epstein documents remain pending:

The Florida request was approved Friday. The New York requests are pending, with the Justice Department facing a Monday deadline to make its final filing – a response to submissions by victims, Epstein’s estate and Maxwell’s lawyers. The judges in those matters have said they plan to rule expeditiously.

U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s meeting in Florida on Thursday with Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s lead negotiator, was “productive,” according to a White House official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The American and Ukrainian officials were due to brief their respective leaders on Friday and reconvene for further talks later in the day, the official added.

The president wore the medal around his neck and stood near a gold trophy that bore his name, depicting hands holding up the world, as he accepted the new FIFA peace prize at the 2026 World Cup draw.

Trump thanked his family and first lady Melania Trump, then Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney for their “coordination and friendship and relationship. … But most importantly, I just want thank everybody.”

Trump, who has openly campaigned for the Nobel Peace Price, had been expected to receive the newly created FIFA prize. He and FIFA president Gianni Infantino are close allies, and Infantino had made it clear that he thought Trump should have won the Nobel for his efforts to broker a ceasefire in Gaza.

Infantino told Trump on stage that he had worked to obtain peace “in your way, but you obtained it in an incredible way.”

He assured Trump “You can always count on my support.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer spoke with Vice Premier He Lifeng and had a “constructive” conversation, Bessent said in an X post Friday.

“Greer and I discussed the ongoing implementation of the Busan arrangement between President Trump and President Xi, which is going well,” Bessent said, referring to the U.S.-China trade understanding announced after Trump met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea, in October.

“I also reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to continued engagement with China,” Bessent said.

The data – a months-old snapshot delayed five weeks by the government shutdown – likely eases the way to a widely expected interest rate cut by the central bank next week.

Prices rose 0.3% in September from August, matching the previous month’s increase, the Commerce Department said Friday.

Inflation remains above the central bank’s 2% target, partly because of Trump’s tariffs, but many Fed officials argue that weak hiring, modest economic growth, and slowing wage gains will steadily reduce price gains in the coming months.

The Fed’s decision remains tricky: It would typically keep rates high to fight inflation. At the same time, it is worried about weak hiring and a slowly rising unemployment rate. It hopes that reducing rates will spur more borrowing and boost the economy.

The man accused of planting a pair of pipe bombs outside the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic national parties in Washington on the eve of the U.S. Capitol attack confessed to the act in interviews with investigators, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

Brian Cole Jr. also indicated that he believed the 2020 election was stolen and expressed views supportive of President Donald Trump, said the people, who were not authorized to discuss by name an ongoing investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The details add to a still-emerging portrait of the 30-year-old suspect from Woodbridge, Virginia, and it was not immediately clear what other information or perspectives he may have shared while cooperating with law enforcement following his arrest on Thursday.

– By Eric Tucker, Alanna Durkin Richer and Michael Kunzelman

Worries about inflation eased a bit among U.S. consumers this month, but their mood remains gloomy.

The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index, released Friday in a preliminary version, rose to 53.3 early this month from a final reading of 51 in November. This beats the 52 mark economists had forecast but it’s still down considerably from 71.7 in January.

Expectations for year-ahead inflation dipped from 4.5% last month to to 4.1%, the lowest level since Trump returned to the White House and began imposing sweeping taxes – tariffs – on imports from countries around the world.

The average U.S. tariff rate has climbed from 2.4% in January to 16.8% last month, highest since 1935, according to calculations by the Budget Lab at Yale University.

The Homeland Security secretary says the Trump administration is expanding its travel ban from 19 to more than 30 countries.

Kristi Noem wouldn’t say which countries would be included in the expansion as she spoke in an interview late Thursday with Fox News Channel host Laura Ingraham.

Trump is “continuing to evaluate countries,” Noem said. “If they don’t have a stable government there, if they don’t have a country that can sustain itself and tell us who those individuals are and help us vet them, why should we allow people from that country to come here to the United States?”

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is attending the World Cup draw Friday afternoon at the Kennedy Center – her first face-to-face meeting with Trump since he returned to the White House in January.

Also on-hand will be Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada, who hasn’t met with Trump since the U.S. president clashed with Ontario over an ad criticizing U.S. tariff policymaking.

Officials from all three countries recently began reviewing the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which was negotiated during Trump’s first term and replaced the 1994 NAFTA pact. Trump says he’ll meet with the other two leaders after the event, with trade on the agenda. “We are going to meet with both and we are getting along very well,” Trump said.

Unions say the State Department notified the employees on Monday that they would be fired on Friday.

But U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ruled Thursday that the union representing the employees is likely to prevail on its argument that the government funding bill that ended the shutdown prohibits the cuts.

A message to the department was not immediately returned.

The administration argued that the funding bill only prevented layoffs initiated during the shutdown. It had notified the 250 or so foreign and civil service employees of their terminations well before the shutdown started.

Illston, nominated to the bench in San Francisco by President Bill Clinton, said nothing in the “plain text” of the funding bill’s layoff prohibition supports that interpretation.

Two patients escorted her into the festively decorated atrium at Children’s National Hospital in Washington.

The first lady sat in a big red chair in front of a large Christmas tree and read, “How Does Santa Go Down the Chimney,” by Mac Barnett.

She told the children she hopes Santa will visit and “bring you a lot of toys.”

“I wish you a lot of strength,” she said.

She made small talk with the children in the audience before departing with a “Merry Christmas.” She also was to make private visits with children in the hematology/oncology wing.

Sen. Ruben Gallego is joining Democrat Eileen Higgins in Miami this weekend for early voting events. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg also supported her in a video shared by her campaign on Friday. If she wins the mayoral runoff, she could become the first Democrat to lead Miami in over 25 years.

Emilio Gonzalez has received endorsements from Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and is rallying voters with Sen. Rick Scott on Friday. A loss for the Republican in the nonpartisan race could be perceived as a setback for the GOP in Florida, given how much Miami has moved to the right over the years.

Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, has been campaigning for fellow party members in Latino areas, helping New Jersey Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill and Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger. Both off-year election results last month showed signs of a Hispanic shift away from Republicans.

The House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee want to hear from Navy Adm. Alvin Holsey, who is retiring as the commander of U.S. forces in Central and South America, according to a person with knowledge of the request who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

The committees are scrutinizing an attack in September when U.S. forces killed two survivors of an initial attack on an alleged drug boat. They have already heard from the Navy admiral who commanded the special forces unit that carried out the attack, but also want to hear from Holsey. He has been commanding the campaign to destroy boats in international waters near Venezuela that are allegedly carrying drugs, but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced last month that Holsey would be retiring early from his command post.

It was not clear whether the Pentagon will comply with the request, and Holsey will be retiring in the coming week.

– By Stephen Groves

Several hundred federal agents are scouring the greater New Orleans metro area in a Border Patrol-led enforcement operation that seeks at least 5,000 arrests.

The Department of Homeland Security has already touted dozens of arrests since the operation began Wednesday, saying it is targeting people with criminal records and highlighting the arrest of a convicted sex offender. But the agency has shared only limited details of who was detained.

Immigrant rights groups have accused federal agents of racial profiling, and some New Orleans officials say 5,000 arrests is unrealistic.

In the Hispanic enclave of Kenner, a city just outside New Orleans, restaurants like Carmela Diaz’s taco joint have closed down because staff and customers are afraid to leave their homes.

A federal vaccine advisory committee voted on Friday to end the longstanding recommendation that all U.S. babies get the hepatitis B vaccine on the day they’re born.

For decades, the government has advised that all babies be vaccinated against the liver infection right after birth. The shots are widely considered to be a public health success for preventing thousands of illnesses. But U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s committee voted to recommend the birth dose only for babies whose mothers test positive or whose infection status is unknown.

A loud chorus of medical and public health leaders decried the decision, which marks a return to a public health strategy abandoned more than three decades ago.

The area in and around Bentonville, Arkansas, best known as home to the Walmart headquarters, has emerged as a little-known hot spot in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Based on an Associated Press review of ICE arrest data, jail records, police reports and interviews with residents, immigration lawyers and watchdogs, the county offers a window into what the future may hold for places where local and state law enforcement authorities cooperate broadly with ICE.

The Department of Homeland Security now has cooperation agreements with 1,180 state and local agencies and is offering some financial incentives for local help making arrests. Records show the partnership in Arkansas has led to the detention and deportation of some violent criminals but also repeatedly used misdemeanor arrests to move people toward deportations, splitting apart families, sparking protests and spreading fear.

In his latest broadside against the Senate’s filibuster rule, Trump said Democrats would pack the Supreme Court with “21 Justices” if they win back power.

“They will do this on their very first day in office, through the simple Termination of the Filibuster, SHOULD THEY WIN THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

While more Democrats in recent years have embraced the idea of expanding the Supreme Court, it is by no means a broadly held position among lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Trump has repeatedly pushed to end the filibuster and its 60-vote threshold that encourages a bipartisan approach to lawmaking.

Trump’s White House is asking for help from “everyday Americans” for a web portal it says will spotlight news bias, targeting the Boston Globe, CBS News and The Independent as its inaugural “media offender of the week.”

It’s the latest wrinkle in Trump’s fight against what he labeled “fake news.” The Republican president has taken CBS News and The Wall Street Journal to court over their coverage, is litigating against The Associated Press over media access and has moved to dismantle the Voice of America among other government-run outlets. Trump has also engaged in personal attacks, particularly against female reporters, telling one to be “quiet, piggy.”

“It’s honestly overwhelming to keep up with it all and to constantly have to defend against this fake news and these attacks,” said press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who called the new web portal an attempt to hold journalists accountable.

The White House released a new national security strategy on Friday that paints European allies as weak and aims to reassert America’s dominance in the Western Hemisphere. The document includes scathing critiques of the migration and free speech policies of longstanding allies, suggesting they face the “prospect of civilizational erasure” and raising doubts about their long-term reliability as American partners.

It sometimes chilly and bellicose terms, it reinforces Trump’s “America First” philosophy, which favors nonintervention overseas, questions decades of strategic relationships and prioritizes U.S. interests above all.

This is the first national security strategy, a document the administration is required by law to release, since Trump’s return to office. It is a stark break from the course set by President Joe Biden, who sought to reinvigorate alliances rattled by Trump’s first term and to check a more assertive Russia.

About 600,000 people were being processed to come to the U.S. as refugees when Trump suspended the program. Many had already sold their homes and possessions after submitting reams of documents, passing interviews by U.S. officials and even buying airline tickets.

Trump resumed the program in October with a historically low cap of 7,500 people – mostly white South Africans. A litany of new restrictions was announced after an Afghan national was arrested in the shooting of two National Guard members.

Trump will take center stage at Friday’s World Cup draw in Washington, rolling out the welcome mat for teams and fans from around the globe at a time when his administration is expanding restrictions on travel to the United States for people from 19 countries and he has hardened his rhetoric against immigrants.

The administration is betting that its push to expedite visa processing for visitors and the excitement about the matchups for next summer’s tournament – hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico – will outweigh concerns that Trump’s immigration messaging undercuts the theme of global unity that the World Cup is meant to represent.

In the past week, Trump has said he wants to permanently pause immigration from poor countries and he has singled out Afghans and Somalis for particular contempt. The Republican president is also overseeing the signing a peace agreement between Rwanda and Congo on Thursday at an event with leaders from a host of foreign countries and he is expected to be honored for his peacemaking efforts by FIFA, international soccer’s governing body, during the World Cup draw.

Critics say the dueling messages are jarring.

The White House is expected to submit plans for Trump’s new ballroom to a federal planning commission before the year ends, about three months after construction began.

Will Scharf, named by Trump as chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission, said Thursday that White House colleagues told him the long-awaited plans will be filed sometime in December.

“Once plans are submitted, that’s really when the role of this commission, and its professional staff, will begin,” said Scharf, who is also a top White House aide. He said the review process would happen at a “normal and deliberative pace.”

Separately, the White House confirmed Thursday that a second architectural firm has been added to the project. Spokesperson Davis Ingle said architect Shalom Baranes of Washington, D.C., was needed as construction moves into a new phase.

The U.S. Southern Command said the strike on the small boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean Thursday was the 22nd strike so far, killing four people and raising the death toll to at least 87.

The strike was announced as Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley appeared for classified briefings as lawmakers began an investigation into the very first strike. Bradley told them there was no “kill them all” order from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Democrats are pushing for the release of video they say shows a war crime, or murder.

A divided Supreme Court on Thursday came to the rescue of Texas Republicans, allowing next year’s elections to be held under the state’s congressional redistricting plan favorable to the GOP and pushed by President Donald Trump despite a lower-court ruling that the map likely discriminates on the basis of race.

With conservative justices in the majority, the court acted on an emergency request from Texas for quick action because qualifying in the new districts already has begun, with primary elections in March. Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the three liberal justices that her colleagues should not have intervened.

He said it four times in seven seconds. In fact, Trump’s rhetorical attacks on immigrants have been building since he said Mexico was sending “rapists” across the border during his presidential campaign announcement a decade ago.

But with one flourish closing a two-hour Cabinet meeting Tuesday, Trump amped up his anti-immigrant rhetoric even further and ditched any claim that his administration was only seeking to remove people without legal status.

It was a riveting display in a nation that prides itself as being founded and enriched by immigrants, alongside an ugly history of enslaving millions of them and limiting who can come in.

Trump’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and deportations have reignited an age-old debate – and widened the nation’s divisions – over who can be an American,.

A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected the Trump administration’s bid to halt an order requiring it to release millions of dollars in grants meant to address the shortage of mental health workers in schools.

The program was funded by Congress after the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, included grants meant to help schools hire more counselors, psychologists and social workers, with a focus on rural and underserved areas of the country.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation on Thursday announced a new plan for operating the Central Valley Project, a vast system of pumps, dams and canals that direct water southward from the state’s wetter north.

It follows an executive order Trump signed in January calling for more water to flow to farmers, arguing the state was wasting the precious resource in the name of protecting endangered fish species.