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Read Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearing opening statement

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Digested week: Tutting Trump and Maga fans send each other to Coventry | Emma Brockes

Monday
Rightwing American conspiracy theories often circle the drain of lurid abuse stories. So it was quite a twist this week to see the chickens of this particular rancid online conspiracy culture come home to roost in the form of Maga faithfuls turning on Donald Trump for what the US president now refers to as the “Jeffrey Epstein hoax”.
Epstein, a convicted child sex offender, killed himself in prison while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in 2019, and Trump’s conspiracy-hungry supporters are now accusing the president of a cover-up. Specifically enraging to Trump fans is his decision to tread water on releasing the “Epstein files”, FBI files supposedly containing the names of the banker’s “client list”, which, last month, Elon Musk suggested Trump himself may appear on.
Until very recently, the Trump administration had been happy to throw meat to the lions by suggesting it would release the files. But in recent weeks the president has dropped that promise and instead recommended that everyone “move on”. Meanwhile, the FBI issued a memo last week saying it did not have evidence that would justify interrogating further suspects.
Well. Can you imagine? Across the US, the deep-state-is-lying-to-us klaxons went off like tornado warnings and before you knew it, the Maga megaphone Laura Loomer was calling for the attorney general, Pam Bondi, to resign, the Trump ally Steve Bannon demanded the dissolution of federal law enforcement, and Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, called the FBI memo a “cover-up”. Which brings us to the domino run of events this week: Trump coming out fighting against his followers, who he described on Truth Social as “weaklings” and “my PAST supporters”, who “have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker”. And a partial, 11th-hour climbdown when he ordered Bondi to release testimony from the Epstein grand jury. As Trump himself might say: beautiful.
Tuesday
What do tarantulas smell like? Not chocolates, apparently; a useful piece of information to have had at Cologne Bonn airport recently, where news was released this week of a smuggling attempt thwarted by customs officials tipped off by a “noticeable smell”.
Or rather, the notable absence of a smell: officials inspecting a large haul of cake boxes noted they didn’t smell chocolatey, and on further inspection turned out to contain, not confectionery from Vietnam, as the customs paperwork promised, but – what are the chances? – 1,500 baby tarantulas in individual plastic vials.
Many of the tarantulas hadn’t survived the journey from Vietnam, which feels like the opener to a dark Pixar movie or the trigger for an odd conflation of responses: revulsion, fear and sympathy.
Wednesday
The 2025 Emmy nominations are in and with them, more importantly, the snubs. At the top of the list is Keira Knightley, overlooked for her role in the very patchy Netflix show Black Doves (notable detail: Sarah Lancashire’s bored face in the pilot), followed by Tina Fey’s also really quite bad Netflix show, The Four Seasons, overlooked in every category bar a single nomination for Colman Domingo.
Meanwhile, the parlousness of John Hamm’s suburban comedy drama, Your Friends & Neighbours, was recognised by Emmy voters with a nod for the theme music and nothing else. But while some media outlets pointed to Renée Zellweger being overlooked for her role in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy – which found itself in the TV movie category since it went straight to streaming in the US – this wasn’t quite right. For a movie, show or performer to count as having been snubbed, voters must have approached it with reasonably high expectations in the first place.
Thursday
Crucial to Trump’s “Epstein hoax” about-face seems to be the existence of what, in a story broken by the Wall Street Journal, the newspaper described as a “bawdy” letter and cartoon, allegedly written by Trump to Epstein on the occasion of his 50th birthday and included in a special album compiled for Epstein by Ghislaine Maxwell – names that fall like a fantasy dinner party list but where the object is to assemble the worst people in the world.
It is the Journal’s attempt to describe Trump’s alleged cartoon-drawing skills that particularly arrests in this new twist: the president’s alleged sketch featured the naked silhouette of a woman in which, wrote the Journal, “a pair of small arcs denotes the woman’s breasts,” (the choice of “denotes”, here, really raising the tone), and Trump’s “signature is a squiggly ‘Donald’ below her waist, mimicking pubic hair”.
The message, meanwhile, allegedly read: “Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret.” And while Trump jumped on Truth Social to call the note a fake and threaten the Journal with legal action, the rest of us could only sit back and marvel at the way life mimics pulp fiction – or rather, Alice in Wonderland, in which the president’s difficulties aren’t authored by a bold defender of Truth, but by the man who arguably bears more responsibility for his rise than any other: Journal proprietor and sudden hero of the hour, Rupert Murdoch.
Friday
In a week of awkward missives, Pat Brennan has resigned from his post as a parish priest in Coventry and marked the occasion with what the Metro described as a “sassy poem”. In his blog, Humble Piety, the priest posted a verse entry entitled Not I Lord Surely!, in which he blasted parishioners for being, among other things, “unfriendly”, “disdainful”, “bored”, “gossiping” and “tutting for a living”, and nailed a rhyme scheme in which he paired “holier too” with “you know who”, and “Lord’s own seal” with “it can feel”. We can only hope this style of critique catches on.
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Senate panel to vote on federal judge nomination for Emil Bove, who defended Trump

Emil Bove, President Trump’s pick to serve as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on June 25.
Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
An attorney tied to some of the most aggressive legal moves by the Justice Department this year is in line to get a promotion soon, if President Trump gets his way.
A Senate panel is preparing to vote Thursday to advance a life-tenured judicial nomination for Emil Bove. Bove, 44, previously served as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan and defended Trump in a pair of criminal cases filed by the Justice Department.

The White House says Bove is an ideal nominee for an open seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Trump has posted on social media that Bove would “do anything else that is necessary to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.”
But Bove’s record in and outside the Justice Department has fueled opposition from 900 former DOJ lawyers who identify with both major political parties and a group of more than 75 retired state and federal court judges who fear his intense loyalty to the president would carry over onto the bench.
“The rule of law is really only as strong as the institutions that enforce it and then interpret it — chief among them the DOJ and the judiciary,” said Stacey Young, who leads Justice Connection, a group that helps Justice Department lawyers find ethics and legal advice. “And it would be disgraceful to elevate someone who’s degraded one of those institutions to a lifetime seat on the other.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is charging full steam ahead on the nomination, despite requests from Democrats to investigate claims made against Bove by a department whistleblower.
Erez Reuveni, a longtime DOJ lawyer fired this year for acknowledging the administration had mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, recently came forward with allegations that Bove told government lawyers they might need to disobey court orders. Reuveni produced text messages, emails and other documents to back up his claims.
At his confirmation hearing, Bove told lawmakers he was not an “enforcer” or a “henchman” for the president. He denied that he had ever told subordinates to violate a court order. But he said he did not recall telling DOJ lawyers in a meeting that they might have to tell judges “f*** you” if the courts tried to block the White House’s effort to roll out speedy deportations of migrants, as was alleged in the whistleblower complaint.

That’s a red flag for former federal prosecutor David Laufman, who said Bove has taken a “wrecking ball” to the Justice Department this year by firing career prosecutors and FBI agents who worked on cases involving Trump and the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
“The volume and quality of the evidence contradicting his failure to recall tells us everything we need to know about his contempt for the judiciary, his contempt for longstanding department norms,” Laufman said.
Laufman added: “Were he confirmed, we have every reason to believe that Mr. Bove would rubber stamp whatever the administration seeks to do and contribute to a majority ruling in favor of the administration with consequences for the entire country.”
But Grassley said in a letter to Judiciary Committee Democrats this week that he was unpersuaded by the whistleblower allegations.
“Following a comprehensive review of the additional documents that you published following the hearing and discussed in the media, I do not believe that they substantiate any misconduct by Mr. Bove,” Grassley wrote.
Grassley also has questioned why Reuveni’s complaint emerged on the eve of a confirmation hearing for Bove, raising the idea it might be a politically coordinated attack.

But Dana Gold, senior counsel at the Government Accountability Project, said she and other lawyers for Reuveni had been working for months, line by line, to navigate the whistleblower process and ethics considerations.
Of the timing, Gold said, “It had nothing to do with tanking Emil Bove’s nomination. It had to do with getting the truth out.”
Gold added: “We do think that the information is highly relevant to Emil Bove’s nomination, that’s clear. It’s really important in terms of how leadership within the Department of Justice has interpreted and asked career attorneys to pursue a political agenda over the rule of law.”
A DOJ spokesman called Bove “a highly qualified judicial nominee who has done incredible work at the Department of Justice to help protect civil rights, dismantle Foreign Terrorist Organizations, and Make America Safe Again.”
Michael Fragoso advanced scores of judicial nominations when he worked as a Republican Senate aide. Fragoso said all signs point to confirmation of Bove, along committee party lines.
“I don’t think Chairman Grassley would be calling the vote if he didn’t have the votes,” said Fragoso, who’s now a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank, and an attorney at Torridon Law PLLC.
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Mike Johnson calls for Epstein files and ICE memos gives deportation guidance: Morning Rundown

Donald Trump brushes off his supporters’ interest in the Jeffrey Epstein case, and House Speaker Mike Johnson speaks out. An ICE memo details how officials can deport immigrants to third countries. And Grok, the Elon Musk-owned AI chatbot, debuts two so-called “companions.”
Here’s what to know today.
Trump’s supporters won’t quit talking about Jeffrey Epstein
Donald Trump responded to mounting criticism of his administration’s handling of Jeffrey Epstein’s case, saying yesterday that he doesn’t understand the buzz. “He’s dead for a long time,” the president said when asked about frustration from his supporters. “He was never a big factor in terms of life. I don’t understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody.”
Earlier in the day, Trump said Attorney General Pam Bondi should release “whatever she thinks is credible” on Epstein, while Bondi herself declined to answer questions about the issue. Though some have called for her to resign, Bondi was defiant during a press conference. “I’m going to be here as long as the president wants me to be here,” she said.
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Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson showed a rare break from Trump by joining other conservatives in calling for the release of documents. The administration “should put everything out there and let the people decide,” he told conservative commentator Benny Johnson yesterday. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and John Kennedy are among those who have also called out the Trump administration.
The uproar about the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein case comes after the Justice Department and FBI released a memo last week saying they found no evidence that the late financier had kept an “incriminating ‘client list’” or evidence that would lead to the prosecution of third parties. Conspiracy theories that “Epstein didn’t kill himself” began to spread almost immediately after Epstein’s 2019 death in a New York City jail as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges.
Trump also took to Truth Social last Saturday to urge people to move on. If he thought his words would put an end to things, he was wrong. Data from Google shows that searches for Epstein spiked after Trump posted. It was also notable that the post, on the president’s own social network, received many frustrated responses from supporters.
Data from Google shows that searches for Epstein spiked after Trump posted. It was also notable that the post, on the president’s own social network, received many frustrated responses from supporters.
Trump has used conspiracy theories for political gain since before he ran for president, like when he stoked false claims that Barack Obama’s birth certificate was fake. During his most recent presidential campaign, Trump said he would have “no problem” looking into an Epstein client list. And once he took office, Trump appointed people who have also promoted conspiracy theories to senior positions in his administration.
But now, Trump is bearing the brunt of those same conspiracies in an inescapable viral commotion.
Read the full story here.
More politics news:
- Republicans in Congress are racing to pass a $9.4 billion spending cuts package before a Friday deadline.
- Former DNC chair Jaime Harrison is back in the political arena with a new podcast. He spoke with NBC News about why one of his first guests will be Hunter Biden.
- Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the focus of a special legislative session starting next week would shift to flood relief, but his agenda shows lawmakers will be considering more than flood-related measures.
ICE restarts third country deportations with little notice
The Department of Homeland Security resumed third country deportation flights on Tuesday by deporting five immigrant detainees, all from different countries, to the small nation of Eswatini in Southern Africa. The resumption of third country deportations comes as ICE put out new guidance that its employees are allowed in certain circumstances to deport migrants to countries that are not their own in as little as six hours — and without assurances from the third country that they “will not be persecuted or tortured.”
But “in all other cases” where the U.S. has not received those assurances, ICE must follow certain procedures, including that officials must give immigrants a removal notice in a language the person understands and which tells them where the government intends to deport them. Read the full story here.
More immigration news:
- The Pentagon ordered the removal of half of the 4,000 National Guard troops who were mobilized in response to immigration protests in Los Angeles.
- New ICE guidance requires that people who entered the U.S. without legal authorization remain in immigration detention as they fight deportation proceedings in court — meaning they can’t get bond hearings and could potentially be detained for months or years.
- Immigration authorities want landlords to turn over leases and other information on their tenants, signaling a potential new front in the Trump administration’s efforts to locate people in the country illegally.
- ICE detained a father in Washington state who had been working to legalize his residency status in the United States. His pregnant wife pleaded, “I just want him home.”
Adelita Grijalva wins Democratic primary for Arizona House seat
The daughter of the late Rep. Raúl Grijalva won the Democratic primary to fill his former House seat in Arizona, The Associated Press projects. Adelita Grijalva, a former member of the Pima County Board of Supervisors, defeated activist Deja Foxx and former state Rep. Daniel Hernandez and is set to face Republican Daniel Butierez in a special election in September. Both Grijalva, 54, and Foxx described themselves as progressives, but fissures emerged during the campaign over the issue of generational change.
Raúl Grijalva won 12 terms representing Arizona’s 7th House District before he died in March at the age of 77. The heavily Democratic district encompasses most of Tucson and the state’s southern border. Read the full story here.
Read All About It
- A man is in custody after “American Idol” music supervisor Robin Kaye and her husband, Thomas Deluca, were found dead in their Los Angeles home.
- An elite Chinese cyberspy group hacked at least one state’s National Guard network for nearly a year, the Pentagon found.
- TV personality Chip Gaines defended the inclusion of a same-sex couple in the new show “Back to the Frontier” after backlash from religious conservatives.
- Vance Boelter — the man accused of fatally shooting Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband last month — was indicted on federal murder charges.
- “Severance” racked up 27 Emmy nominations, the most of any show this year, followed by “The Penguin” with 24 and “The White Lotus” with 23. See a full list of nominees.
- The National League defeated the American League in the 2025 MLB All-Star Game after the Philadelphia Phillies’ Kyle Schwarber went 3 for 3 in the game’s first home run swing-off, following a 6-6 tie.
Staff Pick: Grok’s new chatbots seem designed to shock and entertain

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok turned heads last week for writing antisemitic social media posts on X. Now, Grok has introduced so-called “Companions” that interact with users. One is a flirty Japanese anime character named Ani who offers to make users’ lives “sexier.” The other is a red panda named Bad Rudi with a penchant for foul language.
Tech reporter David Ingram wrote that both bots criticized the Nazis and the action of xAI, the Musk-owned company behind Grok. But the graphic nature of the companions makes them outliers among other AI chatbots with a willingness to embrace hateful language and sexual content. Just look at snippets of Bad Rudi’s conversation with NBC News, in which the character advocated for stealing a yacht, overthrowing the pope and spiking a town’s water supply with hot sauce and glitter. — Elizabeth Robinson, newsletter editor
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Curious about which food is best for your young pup? Veterinarians recommend the best puppy food with all the proper nutrients and tell us which ingredients to avoid. And should cats eat wet food, dry food or both? Vets break down what you should know when choosing what to feed your feline friend.
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