July 25, 2025: Donald Trump presidency news

Our live coverage of Donald Trump’s presidency has ended for the day. Follow the latest updates or read through the posts below.

Rep. Mike Kennedy arrives to the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, April 10.

GOP Rep. Mike Kennedy compared the unreleased Epstein files to “a festering oil-infected wound with pus underneath” in response to a question about whether he would vote in favor of releasing the documents during a virtual town hall this evening.

Town hall attendees were encouraged to call in with their questions, which were then read on the audio livestream by an event host.

These comments follow a bipartisan push in the House to release the Epstein files as the Trump administration has come under fire for its handling of the documents.

Kennedy pledged to push for “full transparency” in the matter and that he would “vote immediately to get all that released,” as long as the identities of victims are concealed.

Rep. Robert Garcia and Rep. Ro Khanna

Two Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee sent a letter today to lawyers for the estate of Jeffrey Epstein, requesting a copy of a reported album of letters compiled to celebrate the now disgraced financier’s 50th birthday in 2003.

The letter from ranking member Robert Garcia and California Rep. Ro Khanna comes as the Trump administration has come under bipartisan fire for its handling of documents related to Epstein and cites a Wall Street Journal report that the album, contained a letter bearing Donald Trump’s name and outline of a naked woman. The president has denied that he wrote the letter or drew the picture and sued the newspaper last week over the report.

While the request lacks subpoena power, the lawmakers ask that the estate submit a complete copy of the birthday album by August 10.

The House Oversight Committee has already issued a subpoena to depose Ghislaine Maxwell, who the Journal says compiled the album.

This 2013 photo shows Ghislaine Maxwell in New York City.

Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell was granted limited immunity to talk to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in two days of meetings this week, according to a source familiar with the arrangement.

Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence for helping Epstein carry out a years-long scheme to groom and sexually abuse underage girls. She has maintained her innocence and has a pending appeal of her conviction.

The source described the limited immunity arrangement as standard, and said since Maxwell has already been convicted the only thing she could be charged for is lying in the interview, which proffer immunity does not cover.

Here’s what else to know:

Ghislaine Maxwell was granted limited immunity to talk to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, according to a source familiar with the arrangement.

The source described this as standard and said since Maxwell has already been convicted the only thing she could be charged for is lying in the interview, and proffer immunity doesn’t cover that.

The immunity would be a standard part of a proffer or so-called queen for a day session, under which a witness can provide information without fear that anything they say can be used against them. Maxwell has maintained her innocence and has a pending appeal of her conviction.

ABC News was first to report on the limited immunity.

David Oscar Markus, an attorney for Ghislaine Maxwell, talks with the media outside the federal courthouse, Friday, July 25, in Tallahassee, Florida.

Ghislaine Maxwell’s attorney appeared to suggest today that she was seeking a pardon from President Donald Trump.

The comments from Markus came just after he finished sitting in on a meeting between his client and Trump’s deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, who had been asking her a series of questions related to Jeffrey Epstein.

Earlier today, Trump told CNN he hasn’t thought about giving any clemency to Maxwell, though he said he is “allowed to do it” and did not rule it out. After landing in Scotland for a foreign visit today, Trump told reporters asking about the situation, “This is no time to be talking about pardons.”

Remember: Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence for helping Epstein carry out a years-long scheme to groom and sexually abuse underage girls. She’s currently appealing her 2021 conviction.

The Trump administration has decided to release the rest of the nearly $7 billion in funding for public schools that it had frozen, with little notice, earlier this month.

A senior administration official told CNN they have finished a programmatic review, and the additional funds will be released to the states. The administration previously announced the release of $1.3 billion of the frozen funds.

“Guardrails are in place to ensure these funds will not be used in violation of Executive Orders or administration policy,” the official added.

Some background: The nearly monthlong pause in critical funding set off a scramble in schools as they prepared for the fall and summer camps, which faced immediate impacts, with many worried about being able to keep their doors open for the duration of the summer.

The funding for K-12 programs included money for teacher education and recruitment, English language programs, student enrichment and nonprofit learning centers that partner with schools, among other initiatives.

Much of the money goes toward programs that serve some of the US’ poorest children.

One day prior to the date the funds were to be released, the Department of Education instead sent a letter to programs, saying that money is not coming, pending a review. The administration alleged at the time that the money was being used to promote “leftwing” ideologies.

It all comes as the Trump administration is seeking to dismantle the Department of Education, with mass layoffs underway and severe funding cuts under consideration.

President Donald Trump speaks with members of the media after arriving in Scotland on Friday.

President Donald Trump denied again that he was told his name appeared in files tied to the Jeffrey Epstein case, despite reports by CNN and other outlets that Attorney General Pam Bondi briefed him on the matter in May.

Trump’s denial puts him at odds with an account offered by White House officials earlier this week, who told CNN that Bondi informed the president that his name was in the files as part of a “routine briefing” covering the scope of the Justice Department’s findings.

Trump was among several high-profile figures mentioned in the documents, which included unsubstantiated claims that DOJ officials concluded were not credible. Names could be included in the file without necessarily being accused of wrongdoing.

On a potential Maxwell pardon: The president on Friday also dismissed questions about whether he might pardon Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, but did not rule it out.

From Scotland, he also denied playing a role in House Republican leaders’ decision to cut their congressional session short — avoiding initial efforts to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files. Trump said he was “never involved in that.”

“I’m not focused on conspiracy theories,” Trump said. “It’s so sad, you ought to talk about the success of our country instead of this nonsense you talk about over and over again.”

President Donald Trump said he will be meeting with European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday to work on a deal.

“I’ll be meeting with the EU on Sunday, and we’ll be working on a deal,” Trump told reporters as he stepped foot on Sottish grounds.

“We’ll see if we make a deal,” he added.

“Ursula will be here, highly respected woman,” he said referring to the EU chief, who announced earlier Friday she will be meeting with the US president to “discuss transatlantic trade relations.”

“So we look forward to that. That’ll be good,” Trump added.

The president later said, “that would be actually the biggest deal of them all, if we make it,” referencing a trade deal with the European Union.

A pro-Trump flag waves in the wind as President Donald Trump arrives at at Prestwick airport, south of Glasgow, Scotland, on July 25.

President Donald Trump landed at Glasgow Prestwick airport on Friday, kicking off a five-day visit to Scotland. His itinerary includes stops at his two golf resorts, including the official opening of a new 18-hole course in Aberdeenshire.

Upon arrival at 8:28 p.m. local time in Scotland, the president was welcomed by the Honorable Warren Stephens, U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James, and the Right Honorable Ian Murray, MP, secretary of State for Scotland.

Trump is expected to travel to Trump Turnberry in Ayrshire shortly and plans to spend the weekend out of the public eye.

The president is also poised to meet with European Union Chief Ursula von der Leyen for trade discussions and visit Trump International Links in Aberdeen, accompanied by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

The final day of the trip will see Trump officially open the new 18-hole course.

Joining the president on this trip are White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, senior adviser Stephen Miller and chief of staff Susie Wiles. Also traveling are Josh Fisher, head of the White House Office of Administration, and Robert Gabriel, assistant to the president for policy.

Longtime aide Walt Nauta and staff secretary Will Scharf are also a part of the delegation — a standard lineup for many of the president’s trips.

Asked ahead of his trip to Scotland whether he was considering a potential pardon or commutation for Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who has been meeting with the Justice Department this week, President Donald Trump said he hadn’t given it any thought — though he didn’t rule it out.

Here’s the moment Trump answered that question today:

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, right, leaves his hotel for the federal courthouse on Friday in Tallahassee, Florida.

The second day of meetings between Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Ghislaine Maxwell and her lawyer has finished.

Maxwell’s attorney, David Oscar Markus, left the Tallahassee, Florida, federal courthouse where the meeting took place shortly after noon. Markus briefly addressed reporters, saying Maxwell spoke with Blanche from around 9 a.m. local time until around “lunch time,” when the meeting concluded.

Markus said Maxwell “answered every single question asked of her” during this week’s meetings, echoing a statement he made yesterday after the first sit-down.

The lawyer estimated that Maxwell was asked “about 100 different people,” adding that she “didn’t hold anything back.”

Markus said he wasn’t sure how her cooperation would play out, but that “the truth will come out about what happened with Mr. Epstein, and she’s the person who’s answering those questions.”

Remember: Maxwell, a British socialite and ex-girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in federal prison for carrying out a years-long scheme with the disgraced financier to groom and sexually abuse underage girls. She has attempted to appeal her conviction.

Blanche’s meetings with Maxwell this week came with the backdrop of fierce public backlash, including from members of President Donald Trump’s base, over the administration’s perceived lack of transparency surrounding documents related to Epstein’s case.

This post has been updated with comments from Maxwell’s lawyer.

Three recently fired Justice Department employees, including two who worked on January 6, 2021, Capitol riot cases, sued the Trump administration yesterday over their terminations, claiming it violated their due process rights.

The lawsuit filed at the federal court in Washington, DC, comes several weeks after the trio of DOJ officials were abruptly fired without any explanation. It represents the latest instance of ex-government employees going to court to challenge the administration’s decision to skirt federal rules meant to protect against such summary dismissals of career officials.

The fired employees are:

• Michael Gordon, who had been working in the US Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida until he was tapped in 2021 to help prosecute high-profile Capitol Riot cases in Washington, DC

• Joseph Tirrell, who had been serving as a top ethics official at DOJ

• Patricia Hartman, whose time as a public officials specialist at the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia included handling communications for January 6 cases

All three were fired in June and July through short memos signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, according to their 22-page lawsuit. The suits says Gordon and Hartman had “consistently” received glowing performance reviews and Tirrell “was an exemplary employee with no disciplinary history.”

The trio claim the firings violated the due process rights afforded to members of the civil service, who ordinarily cannot be fired without cause.

Read more: The firings were not the first time this year President Donald Trump’s Justice Department purged employees connected to the January 6 cases and other high-profile matters.

President Donald Trump says Hamas’ unwillingness to agree to a ceasefire agreement means it’s now time to “finish the job” and “get rid” of the Palestinian militant group.

“I think they want to die, and it’s very, very bad,” Trump said on the White House South Lawn before leaving for Scotland. “And it got, it got to be to a point where you’re gonna have to finish the job.”

Trump’s comment suggested he would do little to pressure Israel to pull back on its military campaign in Gaza, despite the dire humanitarian conditions there.

Instead, Trump signaled it could be time to escalate the fighting as a deal proves elusive.

“They’re gonna have to fight and they’re gonna have to clean it up. You’re gonna have to get rid of ‘em,” Trump said.

A crowd of protesters gather around a large Palestinian flag during the Red Line for Gaza demonstration in Paris, on July 8.

President Donald Trump says the decision by France to recognize a Palestinian state will have no effect on the conflict and dismissed the move as pointless.

“Look, he’s a different kind of a guy,” Trump told CNN of his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron. “He’s okay. He’s a team player, pretty much. Here’s the good news: what he says doesn’t matter.”

“It’s not going to change anything,” he went on, suggesting the decision would amount to little.

Macron’s late night announcement on social media that he would recognize a Palestinian state at September’s United Nations General Assembly came as a surprise to many. France becomes the first Western member of the UN Security Council and first G7 nation to do so.

The decision sparked an angry reaction from Israel, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it “only serves Hamas propaganda and sets back peace.”

“It is a slap in the face to the victims of October 7th,” Rubio said.

Trump sounded less troubled by the decision, framing it instead as a useless exercise.

“He made a statement, France, Macron. The statement doesn’t carry any weight,” he said. “He’s a very good guy. I like him. But that statement doesn’t carry weight.”

President Donald Trump said Friday that he is thinking about using some tariff revenue to provide rebate checks to certain Americans.

“We’re thinking about a rebate because we have so much money coming in from tariffs that a little rebate for people of a certain income level might be very nice,” Trump told reporters before leaving for Scotland.

His answer was in response to a reporter’s query about whether he might use some of the tariff revenue for rebates. The president also noted that he wants to use the funds to pay down the country’s debt.

So far this year, the US has collected $124 billion in customs and certain excise taxes, which include tariffs, according to US Treasury Department data.

In February, Trump said he was considering giving 20% of the savings identified by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, back to Americans. According to DOGE’s savings website, it has saved nearly $1,200 per taxpayer as of late June, though its calculations have been widely called into question.

When asked for additional details on the rebate checks, a White House official said they had nothing to add to Trump’s remarks.

President Donald Trump said Friday that there’s a 50-50 chance he will strike a trade deal with the European Union ahead of a deadline for imposing hefty tariffs on the US’ close economic partner.

“I would say that we have a 50-50 chance, maybe less than that,” Trump said at the White House. “But they want to make a deal very badly.”

Still, he left the door open for a last-minute agreement, saying he’d only put the odds of a trade pact with Japan at 25% before the US clinched a deal with that nation earlier this week. Trump later revised his prediction, saying the EU still has a “pretty good chance of making a deal.”

The 27-nation bloc would have to “buy down their tariffs” as part of any agreement, Trump said, similar to Japan’s agreement to invest $550 billion in the US, with the US getting the vast majority of any profits. The EU will also have to agree to further open its market to US imports.

Trump has vowed to impose 30% tariffs on the EU on August 1 should the two sides fail to reach an agreement.

The White House is also planning to send out letters to roughly 200 countries next week unilaterally setting a range of tariff rates.

“It’s basically going to say, you’re going to pay 10%, you’re going to pay 15%, you’re going to pay maybe less, I don’t know,” Trump said. “When those letters go out … that means they have a deal, it’s done, they pay that tariff.”

He added that the US’ trade negotiations with Canada have effectively stalled and that his administration is no longer focused on trying to strike a deal.

Some context: Trump earlier this month said he’d raise tariffs to 35% on Canadian goods imported to the United States that aren’t currently exempted by the US-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement. That rate currently stands at 25%.

But Trump heaped praise on Australia, saying the country has offered to lift an import ban on US beef.

“Obviously, they’re looking to do something,” Trump said.

Trump’s top economic advisers are set to negotiate with their counterparts from China in Sweden early next week after agreeing on the framework of a deal last month. Trump on Friday said he hopes for the success, saying his administration has “the confines of a deal with China.”

President Donald Trump said the US contributed $60 million to Gaza aid and that “we’re going to do more,” but added that he hopes it gets there because, he claimed, “the food gets taken.”

“People don’t know this, and we didn’t certainly get any acknowledgment or thank you. But we contributed $60 million to food and supplies and everything else,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday.

“We hope the money gets there because, you know, that money gets taken. The food gets taken. We’re going to do more. But we gave a lot of money,” he said.

More than 100 international humanitarian organizations have called on Israel to end its blockade of Gaza, restore the full flow of food, clean water and medical supplies to the enclave, and agree to a ceasefire.

Israel has said it is allowing ample aid into the besieged Palestinian territory and has previously blamed Hamas for its decision to halt aid shipments, alleging the militant group was stealing supplies and profiting from it. Hamas has denied this allegation.

President Donald Trump told reporters Friday he hasn’t watched the Wednesday episode of “South Park” that skewered him and the parent company of the show, Paramount.

“I haven’t — I’ve never watched South Park,” Trump said before departing the White House Friday. “I don’t know anything about South Park, I’ve never watched South Park.”

The delayed Season 27 premiere of the satirical show revolved around the ending of “wokeness” and a Trump character suing residents of South Park for $5 billion after they protested Jesus appearing in local schools.

The Trump character is portrayed as a sensitive bully who threatens to tariff or sue anyone who disagrees with him in the episode. Never a show to shy away from controversy, one scene depicts the Trump character in bed with Satan.

In a statement Thursday, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers dismissed the episode, saying the show “hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years.”

President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he departs the White House on July 25 in Washington, DC.

President Donald Trump said the Supreme Court’s ruling last year that presidents have immunity for official acts taken while in office probably “helps” former President Barack Obama, whom his administration has accused of orchestrating a criminal plot to undermine Trump’s first presidency.

“It probably helps him a lot,” Trump said at the White House on Friday. The president then suggested the government may look into people in Obama’s orbit.

“It doesn’t help the people around him at all,” the president added.

Trump has accused the Obama administration of manufacturing an intelligence report which assessed that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Trump. Trump accused the former president of treason after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released a slew of documents she said implicates the Obama administration. But the allegations largely conflate and misrepresent what the intelligence community actually concluded.

Obama, for his part, issued a rare statement that called Trump’s allegations “bizarre … ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.”

But any efforts to prosecute Obama would be undermined by the Supreme Court’s ruling on immunity last year that benefited Trump. The case was rooted in Trump’s efforts to avoid criminal prosecution for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.

Trump on Friday suggested Obama had “done criminal acts, there’s no question about it,” before adding: “but he has immunity, and it probably helps him a lot.”

“He owes me big,” the president added. “Obama owes me big.”