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President Donald Trump has lashed out at reporters raising questions about the Epstein files, demanding that the country “get onto something else,” but that’s highly unlikely. Many of the documents haven’t been released, and the ones now public were heavily redacted.
The Department of Justice will allow members of Congress to review unredacted files on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein starting on Monday, according to a letter that was sent to lawmakers. The letter obtained by The Associated Press says that lawmakers will be able to review unredacted versions of the more than 3 million files that the Justice Department has released to comply with a law passed by Congress last year.
While investigators collected ample proof that Epstein sexually abused underage girls, they found scant evidence the well-connected financier led a sex trafficking ring serving powerful men, an Associated Press review of internal Justice Department records shows.
Meanwhile, Trump said he won't apologize for a racist social media post featuring former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama. The White House ultimately blamed the post on a staffer and Trump said “I didn’t make a mistake.”
And Dr. Mehmet Oz is urging people to get inoculated against the measles at a time of outbreaks across several states and as the United States is at risk of losing its measles elimination status. “Take the vaccine, please,” said Oz, “We have a solution for our problem.”
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US Olympians face backlash over politics
1. Figure skater Amber Glenn: The outspoken LGBTQ+ rights activist said she received threats on social media after she responded to a question about what’s happening in America by saying that the queer community is going through a “hard time” amid the political climate under Trump. “I was disappointed because I’ve never had so many people wish me harm before, just for being me and speaking about being decent — human rights and decency,” Glenn said as her team accepted gold medals Sunday night.
2. Freestyle skier Hunter Hess said he doesn’t “represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.” — and got slammed by YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul. “From all true Americans If you don’t want to represent this country go live somewhere else,” Paul wrote on X before he joined Vice President JD Vance at the U.S women’s hockey game.
3. Freestyle skier Chris Lillis referenced Immigration and Customs Enforcement, saying he’s “heartbroken” about what is happening in the U.S. “I think that, as a country, we need to focus on respecting everybody’s rights and making sure that we’re treating our citizens as well as anybody, with love and respect,” Lillis said. “I hope that when people look at athletes compete in the Olympics, they realize that that’s the America that we’re trying to represent.”
President Trump slams Olympians for political remarks
Trump said it’s hard to cheer for American Olympians who are speaking out against his administration’s policies.
Asked at a news conference at the Milan Cortina Games how they feel representing the U.S. while ICE agents are detaining immigrants back home, freestyle skier Hunter Hess replied that he had mixed emotions: “If it aligns with my moral values, I feel like I’m representing it,” Hess said. “Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.”
“Hess, a real Loser, says he doesn’t represent his Country in the current Winter Olympics. If that’s the case, he shouldn’t have tried out for the Team, and it’s too bad he’s on it,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account.
The numbers show Trump’s Bad Bunny claims are not true
Trump, a former reality TV star and dominant social media presence, usually is in touch with ratings and what they mean in the world of entertainment, politics and sports. But his take on Bad Bunny is off. By a lot.
Contrary to Trump’s statement suggestion that Bad Bunny has no appeal, the singer from the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico has been among the world’s most popular artists for years. He was Spotify’s most listened-to artist in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2025, eclipsing Taylor Swift -- another frequent target of the U.S. president -- with nearly 20 billion streams last year.
Last week, he took home album of the year at the 2026 Grammys for his “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” the first all-Spanish language album to win the top prize.
Trump calls Super Bowl halftime show ‘a slap in the face’
In a social media post Sunday night, the president said the Grammy-winning top-streaming megastar Bad Bunny “doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence. Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting.”
Bad Bunny performed nearly entirely in Spanish, recreating his native Puerto Rico from sugar cane fields to a raucous wedding featuring Lady Gaga. And in a country where masked ICE agents are pulling people from their homes and neighborhoods, his patriotism was political:
He carried a football with “Together we are America,” written on the pigskin, and he wrapped up by leading a phalanx of dancers carrying the flags of many Latin American nations and Canada along with the Stars and Stripes, shouting “God Bless America — All of America!”
Behind him, a screen read “The only thing more powerful than hate is love,” repeating comments he made at the 2026 Grammys.
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FBI concluded Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t running a sex trafficking ring for powerful men, files show
The FBI pored over Jeffrey Epstein’s bank records and emails. It searched his homes. It spent years interviewing his victims and examining his connections to some of the world’s most influential people.
But while investigators collected ample proof that Epstein sexually abused underage girls, they found scant evidence the well-connected financier led a sex trafficking ring serving powerful men, an Associated Press review of internal Justice Department records shows.
Videos and photos seized from Epstein’s homes in New York, Florida and the Virgin Islands didn’t depict victims being abused or implicate anyone else in his crimes, a prosecutor wrote in one 2025 memo.
An examination of Epstein’s financial records, including payments he made to entities linked to influential figures in academia, finance and global diplomacy, found no connection to criminal activity, said another internal memo in 2019.
While one Epstein victim made highly public claims that he “lent her” to his rich friends, agents couldn’t confirm that and found no other victims telling a similar story, the records said.
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Masks emerge as symbol of Trump’s ICE crackdown and a flashpoint in Congress
Beyond the car windows being smashed, people tackled on city streets — or even a little child with a floppy bunny ears snowcap detained — the images of masked federal officers has become a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations.
Not in recent U.S. memory has an American policing operation so consistently masked its thousands of officers from the public, a development that the Department of Homeland Security believes is important to safeguard employees from online harassment. But experts warn masking serves another purpose, inciting fear in communities, and risks shattering norms, accountability and trust between the police and its citizenry.
Whether to ban the masks — or allow the masking to continue — has emerged as a central question in the debate in Congress over funding Homeland Security ahead of Friday’s midnight deadline, when it faces a partial agency shutdown.
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‘Take the vaccine, please,’ a top US health official says in an appeal as measles cases rise
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz listens as President Donald Trump speaks about TrumpRx in the South Court Auditorium in the Old Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House campus, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
A leading U.S. health official on Sunday urged people to get inoculated against the measles at a time of outbreaks across several states and as the United States is at risk of losing its measles elimination status.
“Take the vaccine, please,” said Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator whose boss has raised suspicion about the safety and importance of vaccines. “We have a solution for our problem.”
Oz, a heart surgeon, defended some recently revised federal vaccine recommendations as well as past comments from President Donald Trump and the nation’s health chief, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., about the efficacy of vaccines. From Oz, there was a clear message on the measles. “Not all illnesses are equally dangerous and not all people are equally susceptible to those illnesses,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But measles is one you should get your vaccine.”
An outbreak in South Carolina in the hundreds has surpassed the recorded case count in Texas’ 2025 outbreak, and there is also one on the Utah-Arizona border. Multiple other states have had confirmed cases this year. The outbreaks have mostly impacted children and have come as infectious disease experts warn that rising public distrust of vaccines generally may be contributing to the spread of a disease once declared eradicated by public health officials.
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