Trump fuels rumors about impending Epstein files release with major announcement: Live updates

President Donald Trump will speak at the Justice Department on Friday about his plans to restore law and order, Axios reported.

Trump spent much of his 2024 presidential campaign complaining about the ‘weaponization’ of government against him.

After he was elected, the Justice Department dropped two federal cases against him: one tied to possession of classified documents are Mar-a-Lago and one connected with his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Trump has fired many employees at the DoJ and FBI, stacking the agencies with his loyalists.

By Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

The push for Puerto Rico’s freedom from the United States is making waves.

Puerto Rico’s total independence is not a widely popular initiative within the island territory community or in the U.S. In recent elections, Puerto Rican voters have overwhelmingly shown preference for statehood over secession and 59 percent of Americans say they support it becoming the 51st state.

Advocates for independence see Trump as their ticket to freedom.

Over the last month, the Puerto Rican Alliance (PRÁ) sent letters to White House officials and congressional offices, a leading voice in the push for independence told DailyMail.com.

‘The statehooders – they’re totally trying to discredit [us],’ author and Puerto Rican independence activist Javier Hernandez told DailyMail.com.

‘They’re in panic mode right now,’ he insisted.

One of Donald Trump’s Democratic nemesis is getting torched for posting dizzying and ‘cringe’ selfie videos warning of a government shutdown.

Pacing through the halls of a congressional office building holding a tiny microphone, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., recorded two videos of himself intently staring into the camera lens while decrying a Republican-led funding bill.

Many of the clips were shakily shot as he walked at a brisk pace around the Senate and his face was engulfed in shadows without strong lighting.

‘Is the government shutting down? Well, that depends on Donald Trump and the Republicans,’ Schiff begins his four minutes of explanation.

‘Republicans passed a partisan resolution that changed all kinds of funding levels and also stripped Congress of the ability to overturn the Trump tariffs that are wrecking our economy,’ he shared.

President Donald Trump unloaded on the Wall Street Journal Thursday after the paper came out with a bombshell report saying his family was in talks with a crypto exchange whose founder is seeking a pardon.

He called the Journal a ‘globalist’ paper following ‘polluted’ and ‘antiquated’ thinking after he has been hammered in its opinion pages for days for setting off a series of trade wars – including one that had Trump threatening to slap a 200 percent tariff on all wine, champagne and alcohol coming out of European Union countries.

The attack comes despite Trump’s close relations with News Corp chairman emeritus Rupert Murdoch. Trump, 78, has peppered his administration with former Fox News commentators and contributors, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

‘The Globalist Wall Street Journal has no idea what they are doing or saying. They are owned by the polluted thinking of the European Union, which was formed for the primary purpose of “screwing” the United States of America,’ Trump wrote in an angry morning diatribe.

By Emily Goodin, senior White House correspondent

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent defended President Donald Trump’s tariffs, saying he was not concerned about them in ‘a short term.’

‘We want to protect the American worker,’ he told reporters at the White House. Trump has sparked fears of a trade war with his tariff plan.

Bessent then pivoted to attack Senate Democrats, blasting them for not helping Republicans pass their stopgap bill to fund the government through Sept. 30. Without it, the government shuts down Friday at midnight

‘What’s not good for the country is this government shutdown,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what Democrats are thinking here, because they’re going to own it, and to the extent that it hurts confidence hurts the American people.’

The White House is planning to withdraw the nomination of Trump’s pick for CDC director reportedly because of his anti-vaccine views.

Dr Dave Weldon, a former congressman from Florida, was tapped by President Donald Trump to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and scheduled to have his confirmation hearing Thursday morning in front of the Senate Health Committee.

However, people familiar with the situation told Axios the Trump administration had concerns over Dr Weldon’s longtime criticism of vaccines and another said the White House pulled the nomination because they knew he wouldn’t get the votes.

They even created a ‘human shield’ around Trump during the flight to Georgia to guarantee that some ‘problem’ advisers couldn’t get in his ear.

‘The debate was a few hours away, and the aides knew that even if they felt they had everything locked up, that meant there was, as always, still plenty of time for someone to feed him bad advice,’ Isenstadt wrote.

President Donald Trump meets NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte (below) at the White House today.

Trump has consistently criticized other members of the alliance for failing to meet the 2 percent of GDP benchmark for military spending.

He has recently said the U.S. would not defend members who ‘did not pay’.

Article 5 of the organization’s founding treaty says all members will come to the defense of another member in the case of an attack.