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Focus on Trump-Epstein Relationship Grows After Email Release

admin - Latest News - November 13, 2025
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As fallout grows over the tens of thousands newly released Jeffrey Epstein emails and documents, President Donald Trump’s longtime relationship with the late convicted sex offender is back in the spotlight. The president is calling the story a “hoax.” NBC’s Peter Alexander reports and Hallie Jackson joins TODAY with analysis.



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Nov. 13, 2025, 5:00 PM ESTBy Rebecca KeeganOscar voters are getting some extra homework this awards season.An email obtained by NBC News shows how Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members must confirm that they have watched all the movies nominated in each category in order to be allowed to vote. The email, which has not previously been made public, provided guidance on what steps the more than 10,000 voting academy members need to take ahead of the final Oscar ballot deadline March 5. The academy has long required members who vote in certain preliminary rounds, such as those who determine the short list for international films, to confirm that they have watched a group of assigned movies. In April, it revised that policy to note that academy members must watch every Oscar-nominated film in order to vote. The email appears to be the first time the organization is offering detailed information on how the new rule will be enforced. To be eligible to vote, members must watch all five films in each Oscar category and all 10 in the best picture category, the academy said. “You do not need to save movie stubs, tickets or receipts,” the academy wrote in its Oct. 30 email to its voting members. “This is an honor system.”A screenshot from the email sent to academy members Oct. 30.Obtained by NBC NewsWith the new policy, films that members watch on the Academy Screening Room (ASR), a streaming service run by the academy, will be automatically verified. For films that members watch elsewhere, such as at film festivals, private for-your-consideration events or a local multiplex, they must manually mark it “watched” on the streaming service, member website or academy app. “Keep an eye out for eligibility notifications prior to finals voting,” the academy said in its email. “Members will be notified of the categories in which they still need to watch films to be eligible to vote.”While largely applauding the intent of the new policy, three academy members, who declined to speak on the record to maintain professional relationships within the organization, pointed out that it will be difficult to police. Members can start a movie on the streaming service, for instance, but that doesn’t mean they’re actually watching it.The academy declined to comment. Partly the new rule’s timing reflects an evolution in how Oscar voters watch the nominated films. In 2019, the academy made its best picture nominees available on Academy Screening Room, and now the organization has its own data about who is — and isn’t — watching the nominees there. Academy members will be shown when they are eligible to vote in categories and how many films they have left to watch.Obtained by NBC NewsThe idea behind the new rule is to curtail a phenomenon in which academy members who are fans of certain films vote for it in every category on the ballot, regardless of whether they have seen all the other films in those categories. For example, Neon’s “Anora” swept the award show this year, taking home wins in five categories including best picture, best director for Sean Baker and best actress for Mikey Madison. But it’s unclear whether the people who voted for “Anora” multiple times watched other, less buzzy contenders, such as Amazon MGM’s “Nickel Boys,” which was nominated in the best picture and adapted screenplay categories, or Sony Pictures Classics’ “I’m Still Here,” which won international feature and was nominated in best actress for Brazil’s Fernanda Torres.The academy also made several other changes around the Oscars, including the introduction of a new award for achievement in casting, which will be given out in 2026, and an award for achievement in stunt design, which will be handed out for the first time in 2028.The Oscar nominations will be announced Jan. 26, and the 98th annual Academy Awards will take place March 15. Conan O’Brien, who hosted 2025’s ceremony, will return to the Oscars stage next year.Rebecca KeeganRebecca Keegan is the senior Hollywood reporter for NBC News Digital, where she covers the entertainment industry.
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Nov. 11, 2025, 1:31 PM ESTBy Sahil KapurWASHINGTON — Senate Republicans say they’re open to extending a pot of Affordable Care Act funds that will expire at the end of the year — but only if Democrats acquiesce to stricter abortion restrictions on insurance plans.The demand presents a significant hurdle to reaching a bipartisan deal to extend ACA funding designed to avoid major premium hikes next year for more than 20 million Americans, as Democrats are adamant that existing abortion guardrails under Obamacare are sufficient.If the funds are not extended by the end of the year, some people insured under Obamacare could see their bills rise by thousands of dollars per month, raising concerns that millions will choose to go uninsured.Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said there will be a negotiation about an extension after the government reopens. He said one condition will be stricter rules pertaining to the Hyde amendment, which bars federal funding from being used for abortion.Senate Democrats only got a ‘pink promise’ on health care subsidies, says House Democrat08:00To satisfy Democratic demands to comply with the Hyde amendment when the first law passed in 2010, Obamacare does not allow federal funds to cover abortions. Some states allow people insured under Obamacare to access abortion coverage using state or other funding. Republicans want to change that.“That’s what we’re going to negotiate,” Thune told reporters before the Senate passed the bill to end the government shutdown. “A one-year extension along the lines of what [Democrats] are suggesting, and without Hyde protections — there’s just not even, doesn’t even get close.”Thune’s demand for more stringent abortion limits on Obamacare money is backed by colleagues, including Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.C., an outspoken proponent of extending the ACA funds, as well as Sens. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and Mike Lee, R-Utah.Rounds warned that “you won’t get any” Republican votes to extend the money without more stringent abortion limitations.“That’s the message that we shared with a lot of our Democratic colleagues is you can’t do it under your existing framework, and you’re never going to get any Republican votes. Because we believe strongly taxpayer dollars should not go to fund abortions,” he said. “They have a different point of view, but it’s pretty clear that Republicans are solid on that particular issue.”But Democrats say there’s no way they’ll agree to that.Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., responded with a flat “no” when asked if there’s any way Democrats agree to stricter abortion limitations in order to extend the ACA funds.“It’s a nonstarter,” Shaheen told NBC News, pointing to existing guardrails on abortion funding built into the ACA. “It’s not an issue. We already dealt with that issue.”Other Democrats share her opposition to changing those rules.Behind the push is a pressure campaign by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, an influential group fighting to ban abortion in the U.S., to condition Republican support for ACA funding on tougher abortion restrictions.“Since Democrat offers to pass a ‘clean’ extension of these ACA subsidies would extend funding of elective abortion coverage through Obamacare, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America strongly opposes and will score against any such offers — even for one year,” SBA President Marjorie Dannenfelser told senators in a letter dated Nov. 7 and shared with NBC News. “A vote for this extension is a vote for abortion coverage. Votes will be scored, and double-weighted, in each member’s profile on SBA Pro-Life America’s National Pro-Life Scorecard.”Katie Keith, a Georgetown Law professor and founding director of its Center for Health Policy and the Law, said existing law bans any federal funds from flowing to abortion care through ACA plans, including the premium tax credits and cost-sharing reduction payments, consistent with the Hyde amendment.States have the option to create separate revenue streams where enrollees can pay a surcharge to gain abortion coverage through their plans. 25 states ban abortion coverage through ACA marketplaces entirely. The rest are split between requiring it through additional state funding or deferring to insurers.Still, even for states that allow ACA plans to cover abortion, “there are strict segregation requirements,” Keith said. “Since the law was enacted, no federal funds flow toward abortion care.”She said the same rule applies to Medicaid funding.“What critics of the current policy are arguing is they want Hyde plus-plus. This goes far beyond what Hyde requires,” she added. “It’s not about federal funds flowing toward the care, it’s about federal funds flowing toward coverage, even if it’s financed separately. … They want to knock out abortion coverage fully.”And if the SBA proposal becomes law, it would create a serious conflict with the dozen blue states that use their own funds to permit abortion coverage through the ACA marketplaces.“It could knock out federal subsidies for coverage altogether in those states if those funds cannot flow,” said Keith, who worked a stint in the Biden administration before returning to Georgetown.Daines, who sits on the Finance Committee that oversees health policy, said additional Hyde protections have “got to be in there, absolutely” — in any ACA deal.“We’ve got the language for it, the Hyde language,” he said. “Hyde has been a longstanding principle here of not allowing the federal taxpayers to be used for abortion.”Shaheen, a moderate Democrat who is not seeking re-election next year, is the author of a permanent ACA funding extension. She also helped craft the deal to reopen the government. She said she’s open to other reforms to the enhanced ACA tax credits, such as income-based limits, but going beyond existing abortion limitations is a red line.Other Democrats take a similar view.“I don’t think you’re going to get Democratic votes talking about abortion,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. “But there are conversations you can have about the structure of the subsidies once you get into a negotiation. I’ve heard their concerns about income caps and no-premium plans.”Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said the GOP’s abortion demand seems like a smokescreen to disguise the party’s unwillingness to continue that money, which was first passed during the Covid pandemic in 2021 and extended the following year. The subsidies limit premiums to 8.5% of an enrollee’s income.“At that point, they’re just unserious about extending the ACA [funds],” he said. “Once they get into restrictions on abortion, everyone knows what that means. It means that they would like to say they’re for extending ACA, but that they don’t have the votes to do it right now.”Schatz indicated that President Donald Trump, who softened his position on abortion during the 2024 campaign and said it should be left up to states, can steer his party to a viable solution.“This is solved in 10 seconds if Donald Trump wants it solved,” Schatz said.Sahil KapurSahil Kapur is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.Frank Thorp V and Scott Wong contributed.
October 22, 2025
Oct. 21, 2025, 5:38 PM EDT / Updated Oct. 21, 2025, 6:12 PM EDTBy Scott Wong and Kyle StewartWASHINGTON — Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes on Tuesday filed a lawsuit to try to force House Speaker Mike Johnson to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat who won her late father’s seat in a special election nearly one month ago.Johnson, R-La., has said he will seat Grijalva once Senate Democrats agree to reopen the government. But the two parties haven’t been talking for weeks, and there is no indication when the shutdown might end.House Dems march to demand Johnson swear in Grijalva00:56The lawsuit, which Mayes threatened in a letter to Johnson last week, argues that the speaker’s delay is depriving the 813,000 residents living in Arizona’s 7th District of congressional representation. It lists the state of Arizona and Grijalva herself as plaintiffs and the U.S. House, as well as the House clerk and sergeant at arms, as defendants.“Speaker Mike Johnson is actively stripping the people of Arizona of one of their seats in Congress and disenfranchising the voters of Arizona’s seventh Congressional district in the process,” Mayes said in a statement. “By blocking Adelita Grijalva from taking her rightful oath of office, he is subjecting Arizona’s seventh Congressional district to taxation without representation. I will not allow Arizonans to be silenced or treated as second-class citizens in their own democracy.”As he left the Capitol on Tuesday evening, Johnson blasted the Arizona lawsuit as “patently absurd.”Mayes, he said, has “no jurisdiction.”Grijalva and congressional Democrats have been holding news conferences on Capitol Hill, doing TV interviews and staging protests outside Johnson’s office to try to pressure the speaker to relent. But Mayes’ move escalates the standoff and gets the courts involved.House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and other Democrats have argued that Johnson is delaying seating Grijalva because she represents the 218th — and final — signature on a discharge petition needed to force a House vote to compel the Justice Department to release all of its files related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.Johnson has repeatedly denied that the delay has anything to do with the Epstein files. The speaker has said he is happy to swear in Grijalva as soon as the government, now on the 21st day of the shutdown, reopens.And Johnson accused Mayes, a Democrat who is running for re-election in 2026, of seeking publicity following a public clash he had with Arizona’s two Democratic senators, Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly, over the Grijalva issue earlier this month.“So, yet another Democrat politician from Arizona is trying to get national publicity. So now it’s the state AG, who’s going to sue me because … Rep.-elect Grijalva is not yet sworn in,” Johnson told reporters Monday.He said he is following what he called the “Pelosi precedent,” noting that then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., took 25 days to administer the oath of office to then-Rep.-elect Julia Letlow, R-La. Letlow won a 2021 special election to fill the seat of her husband, who died of Covid complications days before he was set to be sworn into office. The House was out on recess following her election, amid the pandemic, and she was sworn in the week that it returned to session.“So I will administer the oath to [Grijalva], I hope, on the first day we come back to legislative session. I’m willing and anxious to do that,” Johnson told reporters in the Capitol.Grijalva handily won her special election on Sept. 23, 28 days ago, and just four days after the House voted to pass its short-term government funding bill and left town.Johnson continued: “In the meantime, instead of doing TikTok videos, she should be serving her constituents. She could be taking their calls. She could be directing them, trying to help them through the crisis that the Democrats have created by shutting down the government.”Grijalva is the daughter of former Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., a progressive power broker and former Natural Resources Committee chairman who died in March after serving more than two decades in the House.”There is so much that cannot be done until I am sworn in,” Grijalva said Tuesday at a news conference with Jeffries. “While we’re getting a lot of attention for not being sworn in, I’d rather get the attention for doing my job.”Once she is sworn in, Grijalva is expected to quickly sign the bipartisan discharge petition — led by Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif. — which would allow them to bypass Johnson’s leadership team and force a vote on releasing the Epstein files.For months, the Epstein issue has been a nagging headache for both Johnson and President Donald Trump. Many of the president’s MAGA supporters have called for transparency and the release of all of the documents related to the case. On Tuesday, Johnson pointed out that the House Oversight Committee is investigating the matter and has released more than 43,000 pages of documents from DOJ and the Epstein estate. “The bipartisan House Oversight Committee is already accomplishing what the discharge petition, that gambit, sought — and much more,” Johnson, standing alongside Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said Tuesday. In an interview in the Capitol, Khanna said Johnson should just swear Grijalva in and hold the vote on the Epstein files because the issue is not going away.“They gotta swear in Adelita Grijalva. I don’t know why they’re delaying the inevitable. They’re kind of hoping this story dies and they get it out of the front pages, but then it comes roaring back once we get the votes,” Khanna told NBC News. “I wish we could just swear Adelita Grijalva in and have a vote on the release of the Epstein files.”Democrats are expected to win another vacant House seat in the coming weeks. On Nov. 4, voters will choose someone to fill the vacancy left by the unexpected death in March of Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Texas, who represented a heavily Democratic district.If Democrats prevail in that special election, it would trim the GOP majority in the House to 219-215 and mean Johnson could only lose a single GOP defection on any vote.Scott WongScott Wong is a senior congressional reporter for NBC News. Kyle StewartKyle Stewart is a producer and off-air reporter covering Congress for NBC News, managing coverage of the House.Julie Tsirkin and Gabrielle Khoriaty contributed.
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