Jordan Klepper didn't explicitly accuse Trump of being in the Epstein files, but he might as well have.
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Wall Street Journal booted from White House press trip to Scotland after Epstein report
Reporters from The Wall Street Journal have been removed from a pool of journalists covering Donald Trump's upcoming trip to Scotland in the wake of the newspaper's reporting on the president's alleged 50th birthday card to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The reporters' removal, first reported by Politico, also follows the president's $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the newspaper and the journalists who wrote the story, as well as right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch and parent companies News Corp and Dow Jones. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement shared with The Independent that neither the newspaper nor 'any other news outlet are not guaranteed special access to cover President Trump in the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One, and in his private workspaces.' 'Due to the Wall Street Journal's fake and defamatory conduct, they will not be one of the [13] outlets on board,' she said. 'Every news organization in the entire world wishes to cover President Trump, and the White House has taken significant steps to include as many voices as possible.' Dow Jones, which publishes the newspaper, declined to comment. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says reporters for The Wall Street Journal will not be allowed to join an upcoming press pool due to what she called 'fake and defamatory conduct' from the newspaper (AFP via Getty Images) The Independent has requested comment from the White House Correspondents Association. Trump's lawsuit, filed in federal court in Miami on July 18, claims the newspaper, its parent companies, executives and journalists falsely smeared the president by accusing him of writing a sexually suggestive birthday card to Epstein in 2003. The birthday greeting is described by the newspaper as also including a birthday wish that says 'may every day be another wonderful secret.' A letter reportedly bearing Trump's name, which the WSJ report claims was reviewed by the newspaper, contains several lines of typewritten text framed by a drawing of a naked woman. His signature is a squiggly 'Donald' below her waist, mimicking pubic hair, according to the report. The defendants 'failed to attach the letter, failed to attach the alleged drawing, failed to show proof that President Trump authored or signed any such letter, and failed to explain how this purported letter was obtained,' according to Trump's lawsuit. 'The reason for those failures is because no authentic letter or drawing exists,' the complaint claims. Trump's relationship with Epstein — who was accused of sexually abusing dozens of minors before he was found dead in his jail cell in 2019 — has come under intense scrutiny in recent weeks following a Department of Justice memo that says no such 'list' of Epstein's alleged clients exists, despite demands from Trump's supporters and allies for a full accounting of Epstein's death and alleged ties to a wider child trafficking conspiracy implicating powerful figures. The White House has previously reprimanded Associated Press reporters and blocked them from covering White House events after the news agency said it would continue to refer to the Gulf of Mexico in its copy while noting that Trump had issued an order attempting to rename the body of water as the Gulf of America. In June, a 2-1 decision on a three-judge federal appellate court panel paused a lower-court ruling that had determined the White House had improperly punished the outlet over the content of its speech. The two judges who agreed to block that lower-court ruling were appointed by Trump in his first term. Leavitt pointed to that ruling in her statement Monday. The earlier ruling from Judge Trevor N. McFadden, another Trump appointee, said the First Amendment forbids the White House from trying to 'shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints.'
Yahoo
20 minutes ago
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Cleveland-Cliffs CEO Calls on Canada to Adopt Steel Tariffs
(Bloomberg) -- Cleveland-Cliffs Inc.'s chief executive Lourenco Goncalves is calling on Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to implement punishing steel import tariffs to protect the nation's industry. Why the Federal Reserve's Building Renovation Costs $2.5 Billion Milan Corruption Probe Casts Shadow Over Property Boom How San Jose's Mayor Is Working to Build an AI Capital Salt Lake City Turns Winter Olympic Bid Into Statewide Bond Boom The notoriously combative US executive and vocal public supporter of President Donald Trump said on Monday that Carney and his cabinet should enact 'significant' trade protections for the nation's steel industry. Goncalves, who bought one of Canada's biggest steelmakers last year, blamed foreign imports for hurting the Canadian market, though he didn't point at American steel imports for the trouble. 'That was the main reason why I bought Stelco, because I believe in Canada. The problem is that apparently the Canadians, particularly the Canadian politicians, they don't believe in Canada,' Goncalves said Monday in an earnings call. 'Let's see how Prime Minister Carney will react. He's not a central banker anymore. I don't like central bankers, but now he's a prime minister, so time to step up and do what's necessary for Canada.' The call for stringent levies on steel comes as Canada pushes to relax tariff levels imposed by the US while carving out as many exceptions as possible. The country last week said it will reduce the amount of foreign steel importers can bring into the country tariff-free, a move to help Canadian producers suffering from Trump's levies on the sector. 'Canada can fix themselves. They import an amount of steel into Canada that's equivalent to the size of the Canadian market,' Goncalves said. 'The very first thing they need to tell foreigners, get out of my market.' Canada is the largest foreign supplier of steel to the US, according to US Commerce Department data. Goncalves also said on the earnings call that Cliffs has engaged JPMorgan Chase & Co. as an adviser for potential sales of the company's non-core assets, which 'could represent billions of dollars of value.' Cliffs is also receiving interest in some of its recently idled facilities, which could also sell for cash, he said. Shares of the Cleveland-based steelmaker rose almost 16% Monday in New York to the highest price since early March. --With assistance from Doug Alexander. (Adds CEO comments on sales process for non-core assets and shares in last two paragraphs.) Elon Musk's Empire Is Creaking Under the Strain of Elon Musk A Rebel Army Is Building a Rare-Earth Empire on China's Border Thailand's Changing Cannabis Rules Leave Farmers in a Tough Spot How Starbucks' CEO Plans to Tame the Rush-Hour Free-for-All What the Tough Job Market for New College Grads Says About the Economy ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
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Trump administration released FBI records on MLK Jr. despite his family's opposition
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has released records of the FBI's surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr., despite opposition from the slain Nobel laureate's family and the civil rights group that he led until his 1968 assassination. The release involves more than 240,000 pages of records that had been under a court-imposed seal since 1977, when the FBI first gathered the records and turned them over to the National Archives and Records Administration. King's family, including his two living children, Martin III and Bernice, were given advance notice of the release and had their own teams reviewing the records ahead of the public disclosure. In a lengthy statement released Monday, the two living King children called their father's case a 'captivating public curiosity for decades.' But the pair emphasized the personal nature of the matter and urged that 'these files must be viewed within their full historical context.' 'As the children of Dr. King and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, his tragic death has been an intensely personal grief — a devastating loss for his wife, children, and the granddaughter he never met -- an absence our family has endured for over 57 years,' they wrote. 'We ask those who engage with the release of these files to do so with empathy, restraint, and respect for our family's continuing grief.' Bernice King was five years old when her father was killed. Martin III was 10. President Donald Trump promised as a candidate to release files related to President John F. Kennedy's 1963 assassination. When Trump took office in January, he signed an executive order to declassify the JFK records, along with those associated with Robert F. Kennedy's and King's 1968 assassinations. The government unsealed the JFK records in March and disclosed some RFK files in April. Besides fulfilling the intent of his January executive order, the latest release serves as another alternative headline for Trump as he tries to mollify supporters angry over his administration's handling of records concerning the sex trafficking investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself behind bars while awaiting trial in 2019, during Trump's first presidency. Trump last Friday ordered the Justice Department to release grand jury testimony but stopped short of unsealing the entire case file. The King records, meanwhile, were initially intended to be sealed until 2027, until Justice Department attorneys asked a federal judge to lift the sealing order ahead of its expiration date. Scholars, history buffs and journalists have been preparing to study the documents to find new information about his assassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King co-founded in 1957 as the Civil Rights Movement blossomed, opposed the release. They, along with King's family, argued that the FBI illegally surveilled King and other civil rights figures, tapping their offices and phone lines with the aim of discrediting them and their movement. It has long been established that then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was intensely interested if not obsessed with King and others that he considered radicals. FBI records released previously show how Hoover's bureau wiretapped King's telephone lines, bugged his hotel rooms and used informants to get information against him. 'He was relentlessly targeted by an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing disinformation and surveillance campaign orchestrated by J. Edgar Hoover through the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),' the King children said in their statement. 'The intent of the government's COINTELPRO campaign was not only to monitor, but to discredit, dismantle and destroy Dr. King's reputation and the broader American Civil Rights Movement," they continued. 'These actions were not only invasions of privacy, but intentional assaults on the truth — undermining the dignity and freedoms of private citizens who fought for justice, designed to neutralize those who dared to challenge the status quo.' Opposition to King intensified even after the Civil Rights Movement compelled Congress and President Lyndon B. Johnson to enact the Civil Right Act of 1964 and the Voting Right Act of 1965. After those landmark victories, King turned much of his attention to economic justice and international peace. He was an outspoken critic of rapacious capitalism and the Vietnam War. King argued that political rights alone were not enough in an uneven economy. Many establishment figures like Hoover viewed King as a communist threat. King was assassinated as he was aiding striking sanitation workers in Memphis, part of his explicit turn toward economic justice. James Earl Ray plead guilty to assassinating King. He later renounced that plea and maintained his innocence until his death in 1998. Members of King's family, and others, have questioned whether Ray acted alone, or if he was even involved. King's widow, Coretta Scott King, asked for the probe to be reopened, and in 1998, then-Attorney General Janet Reno directed the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department to take a new look. The Justice Department said it 'found nothing to disturb the 1969 judicial determination that James Earl Ray murdered Dr. King.' Solve the daily Crossword
