A federal judgeruledThursday that the Department of Justice admitted to breaking the law by failing to release the majority of its files on Jeffrey Epstein to the public, giving acting Attorney General Todd Blanche a week to release more information.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan wrote inhis opinionthat Blanche failed to address allegations from journalist Katie Phang that the Trump administration failed to release the files in full. Phangsuedthe DOJ in April over a “brazen, shocking, and ongoing violation” of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Congress passed last year.
“The Attorney General does not respond substantively to any of these arguments,” Sullivan said in his ruling. “The Attorney General has conceded that he is in violation of the Act.”
Sullivan issued a preliminary injunction giving Blanche one week to release information redacted from the files, including names, or provide detailed reasons for the redactions. Some of the files in question include the FBI’s notes from interviews with a woman who accused President Trump of assaulting her in the 1980s as a 13-year-old.
The files covered by the injunction also include email exchanges with Epstein concerning an alleged “torture video” and sex acts with minors; the names of co-defendants from a draft indictment; the identities of Epstein’s potential co-conspirators and DOJ employees who sent messages about them; and information in “foreign languages” that the DOJ said it couldn’t translate and redact.
The DOJ has said in the past that its unreleased Epstein files were not verified, and contained “unfounded and false” claims about Trump. But the law passed by Congress leaves few exceptions, and now Blanche, Trump’s former personal attorney, will have to answer for why some of the files remain hidden.
“The government ignored its own law and blew off a judge’s order, all for the sake of protecting the very powerful and the very rich,” said Brendan Ballou, Katie Phang’s attorney, toPolitico. “Doing so had consequences, and now the public will finally get transparency around Jeffrey Epstein and his network.”
Texas is poised to make the Bible required reading for five million public school students.
The Texas State Board of Education is expected to vote Friday to approve legislation to scrap teaching about “World Cultures” and make Bible stories and verses a permanent part of the K-12 curriculum—a blatant violation of the separation between church and state.
Critics of the measure argue that the changes risk alienating children from other religious or nonreligious backgrounds and infringe on the ability of parents to guide their children’s moral and religious education,CNNreported.
If theproposed reading listis approved, primary school-aged students would be taught stories like Noah’s Ark, David and Goliath, and Daniel in the Lion’s Den. Middle school students would study the Shepherd Psalm from the Book of Psalms, as well as the religious writings of poets like Langston Hughes and Robert Frost. High schoolers would read from the second chapter of Genesis, detailing the creation of Adam and Eve—a story that exists across multiple religions but in vastly different forms.
Students would be able to opt out of these lessons, but as the texts would be made a part of the official curriculum, that could potentially affect their grades.
The proposed curriculum would only allow the use of verses from specific Bible translations, including the King James Bible, which is not embraced by the Roman Catholic Church but is widely used by Protestant and Evangelical churches, according to CNN.
In 2023, Texas became the first state to allow the hiring of chaplains in schools, and the next year the stateofferedextra money to public schools willing to provide optional Bible instruction. Last year, Texas became the largest of a slew of red states to require public schools to post theTen Commandmentsin classrooms.
These newest proposed changes come as President Donald Trump’s administrationtakes up the guiseof “Christian nationalism”—while practicing policies that aren’t very Christian or particularly nationalist.
