Judge rejects Trump administration effort to unseal Epstein grand jury records in Florida

A judge on Wednesday rejected a Trump administration request to unseal transcripts from grand jury investigations of Jeffrey Epstein years ago in Florida, though a similar request for the work of a different grand jury is pending in New York.

U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg in West Palm Beach said the request to release grand jury documents from 2005 and 2007 did not meet any of the extraordinary exceptions under federal law that could make them public.

The Justice Department last week asked the judge to release records to quell a storm among supporters of President Donald Trump who believe there was a conspiracy to protect Epstein’s clients, conceal videos of crimes being committed and other evidence.

In 2008, Epstein cut a deal with federal prosecutors in Florida that allowed him to escape more severe federal charges and instead plead guilty to state charges of procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and solicitation of prostitution.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche had asked judges in Florida and New York to unseal transcripts from grand jury proceedings that resulted in indictments against Epstein and former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, saying “transparency to the American public is of the utmost importance to this Administration.”

___

House subcommittee votes to subpoena Justice Department for Epstein files

WASHINGTON (AP) — A House subcommittee on Wednesday voted to subpoena the Department of Justice for files in the sex trafficking investigation into Jeffrey Epstein after Democrats successfully goaded GOP lawmakers to defy President Donald Trump and Republican leadership to support the action.

The vote showed the intensifying push for disclosures in the Epstein investigation even as House Speaker Mike Johnson — caught between demands from Trump and clamoring from his own members for the House to act — was sending lawmakers home a day early for its August recess. The House Committee on Oversight also issued a subpoena Wednesday for Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted sex offender and girlfriend of the late Epstein, to testify before committee officials in August.

Meanwhile, Democrats on a subcommittee of the powerful House Oversight Committee made a motion for the subpoena Wednesday afternoon. Three Republicans on the panel voted with Democrats for the subpoena, sending it through on an 8-2 vote tally.

The Republican subcommittee chairman, Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana, said that work was beginning to draft the subpoena but did not give a timeline for when it would be issued.

“I've never handled a subpoena like this. This is some fascinating stuff,” said Higgins, who voted against the motion.

___

Columbia University agrees to pay more than $220M in deal with Trump to restore federal funding

NEW YORK (AP) — Columbia University announced Wednesday it has reached a deal with the Trump administration to pay more than $220 million to the federal government to restore federal research money that was canceled in the name of combating antisemitism on campus.

Under the agreement, the Ivy League school will pay a $200 million settlement over three years, the university said. It will also pay $21 million to resolve alleged civil rights violations against Jewish employees that occurred following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, the White House said.

“This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty," acting University President Claire Shipman said.

The school had been threatened with the potential loss of billions of dollars in government support, including more than $400 million in grants canceled earlier this year. The administration pulled the funding because of what it described as the university’s failure to squelch antisemitism on campus during the Israel-Hamas war.

Columbia has since agreed to a series of demands laid out by the Republican administration, including overhauling the university’s student disciplinary process and applying a contentious, federally endorsed definition of antisemitism not only to teaching but to a disciplinary committee that has been investigating students critical of Israel.

___

Appeals court finds Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship unconstitutional, upholds block

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s order seeking to end birthright citizenship is unconstitutional, affirming a lower-court decision that blocked its enforcement nationwide.

The ruling from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals comes after Trump’s plan was also blocked by a federal judge in New Hampshire. It marks the first time an appeals court has weighed in and brings the issue one step closer to coming back quickly before the Supreme Court.

The 9th Circuit decision keeps a block on the Trump administration enforcing the order that would deny citizenship to children born to people who are in the United States illegally or temporarily.

“The district court correctly concluded that the Executive Order’s proposed interpretation, denying citizenship to many persons born in the United States, is unconstitutional. We fully agree,” the majority wrote.

The 2-1 ruling keeps in place a decision from U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour in Seattle, who blocked Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship and decried what he described as the administration’s attempt to ignore the Constitution for political gain. Coughenour was the first to block the order.

___

Bryan Kohberger gets life in prison but leaves loved ones of Idaho students he killed wondering why

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — One after another, the friends and family of the four University of Idaho students killed in their home by Bryan Kohberger vented their emotions in sobs, insults and curses before a packed courtroom Wednesday as he was sentenced to life in prison.

Ben Mogen, the father of Madison Mogen, credited her with helping keep him alive through his fight with addiction. He called her “the only thing I’m proud of.”

Dylan Mortensen, a roommate of the victims who told police of seeing a strange man with bushy eyebrows and a ski mask in the home that night, called Kohberger “a hollow vessel, something less than human.” She shook with tears as she described how Kohberger “took the light they carried into each room.”

“Hell will be waiting,” Kristi Goncalves, the mother of Kaylee Goncalves, told the killer.

Judge Steven Hippler ordered Kohberger to serve four life sentences without parole for first-degree murder in the killings of Mogen, Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin. Kohberger was also given a 10-year sentence for burglary and assessed $270,000 in fines and civil penalties.

___

Judge bars ICE from immediately taking Abrego Garcia into custody if he’s released from jail

A federal judge in Maryland has prohibited the Trump administration from taking Kilmar Abrego Garcia into immediate immigration custody if he’s released from jail in Tennessee while awaiting trial on human smuggling charges, according to an order issued Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the U.S. government to provide notice of three business days if Immigration and Customs Enforcement intends to initiate deportation proceedings against him.

The judge also ordered the government to restore the federal supervision that Abrego Garcia was under before he was wrongfully deported to his native El Salvador in March. That supervision had allowed Abrego Garcia to live and work in Maryland for years, while he periodically checked in with ICE.

“Defendants have done little to assure the Court that absent intervention, Abrego Garcia’s due process rights will be protected,” Xinis wrote in her order.

Abrego Garcia became a prominent face in the debate over President Donald Trump’s immigration policies following his wrongful explusion to El Salvador in March. Trump’s administration violated a U.S. immigration judge’s order in 2019 that shields Abrego Garcia from deportation to El Salvador because he likely faces threats of gang violence there.

___

From tech podcasts to policy: Trump's new AI plan leans heavily on Silicon Valley industry ideas

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday unveiled a sweeping new plan for America’s “global dominance” in artificial intelligence, proposing to cut back environmental regulations to speed up the construction of AI supercomputers while promoting the sale of U.S.-made AI technologies at home and abroad.

The “AI Action Plan” embraces many of the ideas voiced by tech industry lobbyists and the Silicon Valley investors who backed Trump’s election campaign last year.

“America must once again be a country where innovators are rewarded with a green light, not strangled with red tape,” Trump said at an unveiling event that was co-hosted by the bipartisan Hill and Valley Forum and the “All-In” podcast, a business and technology show hosted by four tech investors and entrepreneurs, which includes Trump’s AI czar, David Sacks.

The plan includes some familiar tech lobby pitches. That includes accelerating the sale of AI technology abroad and making it easier to construct the energy-hungry data center buildings that are needed to form and run AI products. It also includes some AI culture war preoccupations of the circle of venture capitalists who endorsed Trump last year.

Trump signed three executive orders Wednesday to deliver on the plan. They seek to fast-track permitting of AI construction projects, expand U.S. tech exports and get rid of “woke” in AI.

___

More than 100 aid groups warn of starvation in Gaza as Israeli strikes kill 29, officials say

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — More than 100 charity and human rights groups said Wednesday that Israel's blockade and ongoing military offensive are pushing Palestinians in the Gaza Strip toward starvation, as Israeli strikes killed another 29 people overnight, according to local health officials.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration's Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, was set to meet with a senior Israeli official about ceasefire talks, a sign that lower-level negotiations that have dragged on for weeks could be approaching a breakthrough.

Experts say Gaza is at risk of famine because of Israel’s blockade and the offensive launched in response to Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack. The head of the World Health Organization said Gaza is “witnessing a deadly surge” in malnutrition and related diseases, and that a “large proportion” of its roughly 2 million people are starving.

Israel says it allows enough aid into the territory and faults delivery efforts by U.N. agencies, which say they are hindered by Israeli restrictions and the breakdown of security.

Hamas has said it will only release the remaining 50 hostages it holds, around 20 of them believed to be alive, in exchange for a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal. Israel has vowed to recover all the captives and continue the war until Hamas has been defeated or disarmed.

___

Doctor pleads guilty to selling Matthew Perry ketamine in the weeks before the actor's death

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A doctor who was a primary target in the sweeping investigation of actor Matthew Perry's overdose death pleaded guilty Wednesday to supplying the “Friends” star with ketamine despite knowing he was a struggling addict.

Dr. Salvador Plasencia became the fourth of the five people charged in connection with Perry’s death to plead guilty. He and a woman prosecutors say was a major ketamine dealer faced the most serious charges after Perry was found dead in the hot tub of his Los Angeles home on Oct. 28, 2023.

Plasencia stood next to his lawyer and said “guilty” four times for four different counts before Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett in federal court in Los Angeles.

Plasencia, 43, was to have gone on trial in August until the doctor agreed last month to plead guilty to four counts of distribution of ketamine, according to the signed document filed in federal court in Los Angeles.

The charges can carry up to 40 years in prison. He is likely to be sentenced to much less, but there is no guarantee in his agreement.

___

Muscogee Nation court rules descendants of enslaved people are entitled to citizenship

The Muscogee Nation Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that two descendants of people once enslaved by the tribe are entitled to tribal citizenship.

The court found that the tribal nation’s citizenship board violated an 1866 treaty when it denied the applications of Rhonda Grayson and Jeffrey Kennedy in 2019 because they could not identify a lineal descendant of the tribe.

“Are we, as a Nation, bound to treaty promises made so many years ago? Today, we answer in the affirmative, because this is what Mvskoke law demands,” the court wrote in its opinion.

The Muscogee Nation is one of five tribes in Oklahoma that once practiced slavery, and in that 1866 treaty with the U.S. government, the tribe both abolished it and granted citizenship to the formerly enslaved. But in 1979, the tribal nation adopted a constitution that restricted membership to the descendants of people listed as “Muscogee (Creek) Indians by blood” on the Dawes Rolls, a census of members of the five tribes created around 1900.

When the Dawes Rolls were created, people were listed on two separate rolls: those who were Muscogee and those who were identified by the U.S. government as Freedmen. In its ruling Wednesday, the court remanded the matter back to the Muscogee Nation's citizenship board and directed it to apply the Treaty of 1866 to Grayson and Kennedy's applications, as well as any future applicants who can trace an ancestor to either roll.

News from © The Associated Press, 2025