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Drawn to President Trump for his pledge to take down the political elite, some of his young constituents say he has failed them.

“Not to be trusted.” A “betrayal.”

This is how some young people on the right have characterized President Trump and his administration’s response to the Justice Department’s latest release of Jeffrey Epstein files. For them, the Epstein story is something of a full-circle moment in their political lives — a reason they cast their ballots for Mr. Trump in 2024 that has calcified into anger and disillusionment.

. . .

[T]hey say their faith in Mr. Trump has diminished in recent weeks as they have observed the administration’s response to the Epstein scandal. For his part, Mr. Schwemmer thinks the president has demonstrated a “lack of seriousness” and a pattern of “obfuscation” as communications related to Mr. Epstein have revealed a globe-spanning web of ties to powerful figures in politics, finance, professional sports and the arts. Included in the recently disclosed files are the names of six current administration officials, Mr. Trump’s among them.

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U.S. officials are threatening major changes to a trade agreement with Mexico and Canada that could upend the way business is done and leave Canada on the outs.

The Trump administration has a list of things it wants Mr. Carney to concede, including longstanding grievances about protected industries in Canada, such as the dairy sector. Another pressing issue for the U.S. administration is the fact that liquor distributors controlled by Ontario and other provincial governments in Canada pulled U.S. liquor off their shelves last year, in retaliation against Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Canada.

Trump administration officials have also been irked by Mr. Carney’s global charm offensive as he seeks to bolster Canada’s trade relationships with other countries, including China. Responding to a modest tariff deal that Mr. Carney struck during a visit to Beijing last month, Mr. Trump threatened to impose 100 percent tariffs on Canadian goods, and claimed that China would “take over” Canada and even ban hockey.

. . .

Mr. Trump and his advisers have indicated that the three-country pact could be scrapped altogether. Instead, the United States could end up with bilateral deals with Canada and Mexico, the advisers have suggested. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

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U.S. officials are threatening major changes to a trade agreement with Mexico and Canada that could upend the way business is done and leave Canada on the outs.

The Trump administration has a list of things it wants Mr. Carney to concede, including longstanding grievances about protected industries in Canada, such as the dairy sector. Another pressing issue for the U.S. administration is the fact that liquor distributors controlled by Ontario and other provincial governments in Canada pulled U.S. liquor off their shelves last year, in retaliation against Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Canada.

Trump administration officials have also been irked by Mr. Carney’s global charm offensive as he seeks to bolster Canada’s trade relationships with other countries, including China. Responding to a modest tariff deal that Mr. Carney struck during a visit to Beijing last month, Mr. Trump threatened to impose 100 percent tariffs on Canadian goods, and claimed that China would “take over” Canada and even ban hockey.

. . .

Mr. Trump and his advisers have indicated that the three-country pact could be scrapped altogether. Instead, the United States could end up with bilateral deals with Canada and Mexico, the advisers have suggested. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

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Jeffrey Epstein cultivated friendly relationships with several customs officers in the U.S. Virgin Islands, offering food, advice and even musical gigs.

One of Jeffrey Epstein’s greatest skills was building and exploiting connections with those who had the power to help or hinder him. In the U.S. Virgin Islands, that included the federal Customs and Border Protection officers who inspected the people and goods that were going to and from his private hideaway.

Mr. Epstein dispensed food, helicopter rides, financial advice and even musical gigs to a handful of C.B.P. officers stationed on St. Thomas, the American port of entry that was near Little St. James, an island that Mr. Epstein owned.

At the same time, Mr. Epstein enjoyed concierge services from some of the customs officers in St. Thomas, according to emails and other records recently released by the Justice Department. They whisked him through inspections. And they helped him troubleshoot when he encountered problems at airports on the mainland.

Starting in 2019, those chummy relationships became the subject of a criminal investigation, the records show.

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President Trump has given no indication that he has made a decision about how to proceed, as diplomatic talks continue.

The rapid buildup of U.S. forces in the Middle East has progressed to the point that President Trump has the option to take military action against Iran as soon as this weekend, administration and Pentagon officials said, leaving the White House with high-stakes choices about pursuing diplomacy or war.

Mr. Trump has given no indication that he has made a decision about how to proceed. But the drive to assemble a military force capable of striking Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missiles and accompanying launch sites has continued this week despite indirect talks between the two nations on Tuesday, with Iran seeking two weeks to come back with fleshed out proposals for a diplomatic resolution.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly demanded that Iran give up its nuclear program, including agreeing not to enrich any more uranium. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, whose country would potentially take part in an attack, has been pushing for action to weaken Iran’s ability to launch missiles at Israel.

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Independence movements don’t usually thrive in regions that are rich.

In the past year, leaders of Alberta’s main separatist organization have travelled repeatedly to Washington, D.C., for quiet meetings with senior American government officials in the Treasury and State departments. They’ve reportedly discussed everything from adopting the U.S. dollar to building an independent Alberta military.

These highly unusual interactions — which prompted Canada to warn the Donald Trump administration to respect Canadian sovereignty — are unfolding just as a new Angus Reid poll shows 29 per cent of Albertans would vote, or are inclined to vote, for separation if a referendum were held today.

This is a clear minority, but it’s also an indication of some discontent. The more interesting question is why a province that has long been among Canada’s richest feels so hard done by that some are willing to contemplate breaking up the country.

Prosecutors have been repeatedly caught between the president’s insistence that they undertake weak or baseless cases and the necessity of having to go to court.

In mid-January, federal prosecutors contacted the lawyers representing six Democratic lawmakers who President Trump said should be charged with sedition for issuing a video this fall reminding military and intelligence personnel that they did not have to obey illegal orders.

Despite Mr. Trump’s claim that the lawmakers’ behavior was “punishable by death,” the tone of the calls was genial. The prosecutors, from the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, said the inquiry into the video was only in its early stages and did not identify a specific law that had been broken, according to six people familiar with the matter.

They said they wanted to speak with the lawmakers themselves, but gave no sense of urgency, even using a baseball analogy to one of the lawyers, suggesting that the investigation was not in the first inning yet.

Less than two weeks later, everything changed.

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NYU Langone Health cited the “current regulatory environment” in its decision to discontinue its gender medicine program for minors.

A major Manhattan hospital, faced with threats of losing federal funding, has closed its prominent medical program for treating transgender youth.

The move by the hospital, NYU Langone Health, comes after the Trump administration in December proposed rules that would pull federal dollars from any hospital that provides gender transition treatments for adolescents, such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy or surgery.

On Tuesday night, a spokesman for NYU Langone issued a statement citing “the current regulatory environment” as among the reasons the hospital had decided to discontinue its program for gender-related care for youth.

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Legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote was only the beginning as the G.O.P. presses to sharply limit voting in line with President Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud.

The strict voter identification measure that Republicans have pushed through the House is just their opening salvo in a broader legislative effort aimed at keeping control of Congress this fall and helping to amplify the president’s false claims of mass voter fraud in the event that they lose.

The G.O.P.’s relentless focus on the bill and an even more restrictive measure making its way through the House — both of which face a steep uphill path to becoming law — is aimed chiefly at intensifying pressure within their own ranks to muscle through new voting restrictions and seek to reshape the electorate in their favor.

But it also allows Republicans to hammer President Trump’s falsehoods about widespread illegal voting particularly by undocumented immigrants, helping them build a case, however groundless, that any Democratic victories in November will be a result of cheating.

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Russian attacks and Ukrainian civilian deaths rose as President Trump’s peace talks dragged on during his first year back in the White House.

President Trump repeatedly promised during his campaign that he would end the war in Ukraine in one day.

But by most measures, the war has grown worse for Ukrainians since Mr. Trump returned to the White House, not better. More civilians were killed and injured in 2025 than in the previous year. More missiles and drones are hitting city centers. Russia captured more territory in its slow-moving advances in 2025 than in any year since 2022, when it launched its full-scale invasion. Moscow has practically destroyed Ukraine’s power grid during the country’s harshest winter in more than a decade.

. . .

After taking office in January 2025, Mr. Trump tossed out the American playbook for the war. He made overtures to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the aggressor in the conflict and an avowed opponent of the West, while distancing the United States from Ukraine. U.S. aid to Ukraine fell by 99 percent in 2025 compared with the year before, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research center. Mr. Trump stopped giving American weapons to Kyiv, unless it or its Western allies paid for them.

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There were plenty of signs that something wasn’t right with Jeffrey Epstein. Why didn’t anyone say something?

When Jeffrey Epstein said “massage” in the years after he got out of jail in 2009, what did his friends and associates think he meant? Epstein had been convicted in a Florida court of sex crimes with minors in 2008. His method, reported in The New York Times at the time, had been to recruit girls as young as 14 to his home and persuade them to undress and massage him. Then he would force them to have sex and paid them cash.

He was charged with sex crimes again in 2018, this time by the federal government, which accused him of trafficking underage girls in the early 2000s. If he committed crimes in the years between 2009 and his death in a Manhattan jail cell while awaiting federal trial in 2019, he was not charged with them. But the Epstein files show that, during that decade, he was both rebuilding and curating his vast, elite social network, while also looking at plans for a new massage room on his private island of Little St. James and choosing marble for his massage room in New York.

. . .

Tessa West, a professor of social psychology at New York University, describes the collective silence around Epstein and his “girls” as “willful inaction.” Even if the guests at Epstein’s table were not engaging in illegal or harmful behavior, some had to have seen red flags, and “they’re doing nothing about it. They’re not saying anything. They’re not discouraging it,” West said. Given what she knows about gender dynamics in her profession, academia, “I am zero surprised by any of this,” she said. Scientists like West offer clues to why and how Epstein’s world functioned to protect him.

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Mr. Bannon, a MAGA podcaster, developed a seemingly chummy relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, who was accused of sex trafficking. He said it was in the name of getting Mr. Epstein to open up.

Midafternoon in late June 2019, Stephen K. Bannon sent Jeffrey Epstein an excited series of texts. “Dude!!!!!” he wrote. “Is this real Tell me this is real.”

Mr. Epstein had just texted him a headline from The Miami Herald. It reported that victims of Mr. Epstein’s sexual abuse had lost a court battle to nullify a decade-old agreement that protected him from prosecution for those crimes.

Off and on for months, Mr. Bannon, a leader in the MAGA movement and a former top aide to President Trump, had been advising Mr. Epstein on how to handle resurrected allegations that he was a serial pedophile. Mr. Bannon recommended which lawyers to hire — his own — when to lie low and when he should jump on an opening to push his narrative. He scheduled what the two men called “media training.”

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