The Department of Justice finally released its first trove of files on Jeffrey Epstein Friday afternoon—with a broken search tool.

The files have been divided into court records, DOJ disclosures, Freedom of Information Act, and House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Disclosures. There is also a search bar that includes a disclaimer: “Due to technical limitations and the format of certain materials (e.g., handwritten text), portions of these documents may not be electronically searchable or may produce unreliable search results.”

The government was legally required to release all the files Friday, but took their time, and ultimately only released a partial batch. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche pledged to release more files in the coming weeks in an interview on Fox News Friday morning.

Many of the released files are redacted nearly in full.

In a statement after the files’ release, the White House absurdly claimed, “The Trump Administration is the most transparent in history.”

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson continued:

By releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena request, and President Trump recently calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends, the Trump Administration has done more for the victims than Democrats ever have. And while President Trump is delivering on his promises, Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries and Stacey Paskett have yet to explain why they were soliciting money and meeting from Epstein after he was a convicted sex offender. The American people deserve answers.

That statement ignores the fact that Republicans in Congress, led by House Speaker MIke Johnson, delayed and stalled on releasing the files for months. Johnson used a government shutdown to delay the swearing-in of Democratic Representative Adelita Grijalva, who was the decisive vote in a discharge petition to force the files’ release. Every Democrat signed the petition, but only four Republicans did: Representatives Thomas Massie, Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Nancy Mace.

Trump still refuses to acknowledge his close relationship with Epstein, and flip-flopped on the files only after he realized popular (and Republican) opinion was strongly in favor of the government making them public. Friday’s release is the first peek into what the Trump administration is willing to tell the public about what the government knows about Epstein, and a lot of it was information people already knew. Legally, though, they should be releasing everything that doesn’t endanger victims.

This story has been updated.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he’s proud of shuttering the U.S. Agency of International Development—but he really shouldn’t be.

During a press conference Friday, Rubio was asked whether he stood by his false claim earlier this year that the Trump administration’s massive cuts to the USAID haven’t killed anyone. Rather than fess up, he doubled down on his deadly decision.

“I’m very proud of the changes we’ve made on foreign aid,” Rubio said. The secretary claimed that the United States would enter into more than 50 “health compacts” with foreign countries by the end of 2025, in order to cut out the middleman nongovernmental organizations that took a share of the assistance.

Under these health compacts, foreign countries would not only receive assistance but would be “provided a plan to build up their own self-sustainment,” Rubio said.

The State Department has only recently begun to roll out its health compacts with foreign countries, deals that represent a major reduction in U.S. health spending in each of these nations. So far, only eight health compacts have been announced, all with the governments of sub-Saharan countries: Cameroon, Kenya, Lesotho, Uganda, Mozambique, Eswatini, Rwanda, and Liberia.

How the secretary plans to seal the deal on 42 more deals by December 31 is unclear.

But Rubio’s sweeping cuts have already taken a devastating toll on communities across the world. By November 2025, funding cuts to USAID assistance aimed at combating infectious diseases had already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children, according to Atul Gawande, a former assistant administrator for global health at USAID during the Biden administration.

The Center for Global Development calculated that the number of lives potentially lost from cutting current spending could be anywhere from 500,000 to one million. Cuts to future spending could potentially lead to between 670,000 and 1.6 million lives lost.

Representative Sarah McBride—the first out transgender member of Congress—had to lobby Republicans to strike down an anti-trans bill because she knew her Democratic colleagues would abandon her.

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted 216–211 to pass MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s legislation to criminalize gender-affirming care like puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgical care for patients under 18, subjecting medical providers to up to 10 years in prison. The legislation would also give parents criminal liability. Three Democrats—Texas Representatives Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, along with North Carolina Representative Don Davis—were expected to vote with Republicans on the bill (and did). So McBride reached out to her right.

“We’re most interested in the caucus, right?” Democratic Representative Becca Balint, co-chair of the Equality Caucus, told NOTUS. “But we also suspected we might lose some Democrats,........

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