Nov. 27 (UPI) — The federal government will not participate in this year’s World AIDS Day, a decades-old event to mourn people who’ve died from the disease and raise awareness.
The State Department has directed employees and grant recipients not to use federal funding to commemorate the day, The New York Times reported Wednesday. While employees can still highlight their work on AIDS and other diseases, they should “refrain from publicly promoting World AIDS Day” in public-facing messaging, the Times reported.
“An awareness day is not a strategy,” Tommy Pigott, a spokesman for the department, told the paper. “Under the leadership of President Trump, the State Department is working directly with foreign governments to save lives and increase their responsibility and burden sharing.”
However, the Trump White House has issued other proclamations for commemorative days intended to raise awareness about autism, organ donation, cancer and others.
World AIDS Day has been observed every Dec. 1 since 1988. President Bill Clinton became the first U.S. head of state in 1993 to issue a proclamation on the deadly immune-deficiency disease.
The Trump administration froze foreign aid spending earlier this year. With the approval of Congress, it later slashed about $7.9 billion in international humanitarian aid programs. However, the cuts left funding intact programs that combat HIV and AIDS, as well as other infectious diseases.
An estimated 40.8 million people were living with HIV, the precursor to AIDS, worldwide in 2024, according to the World Health Organization. An estimated 1.3 million people acquired HIV last year.
However, the United Nations’ program on AIDS warned on Tuesday of international funding cuts and a waning resolve to address the virus.
A report from the U.N. program noted that some funding has been restored for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, an initiative started under George W. Bush that is credited with saving more than 25 million lives. However, the report stated that “service disruptions associated with these and other funding cuts are having long-lasting effects on almost all areas of the HIV response.”
“The funding crisis has exposed the fragility of the progress we fought so hard to achieve,” Winnie Byanyima, executive director of UNAIDS, said in a statement. “Behind every data point in this report are people-babies and children missed for HIV screening or early HIV diagnosis, young women cut off from prevention support, and communities suddenly left without services and care. We cannot abandon them.”
Nov. 21 (UPI) — House Republicans have called on former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to testify before a committee investigating Jeffrey Epstein.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., issued congressional subpoenas seeking Bill Clinton’s testimony Dec. 17 and Hillary Clinton a day later as the committee investigates the Epstein case, USA Today reported.
“The committee looks forward to confirming their appearance and remains committed to delivering transparency and accountability for survivors of Epstein’s heinous crimes and for the American people,” Comer said in a statement.
Comer on Aug. 5 sought the Clintons’ testimonies regarding their relationship with former financier and convicted sex offender Epstein, but their attorney asked Nov. 3 that they be allowed to submit a “written proffer of what little information” they have to share, according to the New York Post.
Comer accused the Clintons of demanding the House committee scrap any plans for them to appear before it when responding to the attorney’s request.
The committee chairman also said the attorney admitted the Clintons have relevant information regarding the matter.
“It is precisely the fact President Clinton and Secretary Clinton each maintained relationships with Mr. Epstein and Ms. [Ghislaine]Maxwell in their personal capacities as private citizens that is of interest to the committee,” Comer told the Clintons’ attorney.
Some legal experts have suggested the Clintons could claim executive privilege to avoid testifying before the committee, but others say the relationships they maintained while in their personal capacities would not be subject to executive privilege, according to the New York Post.
Maxwell unlikely to testify
While the Clintons are scheduled to appear before the House committee next month, Politico reported Maxwell has invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination if she were brought before the committee.
“I could spend a bunch of taxpayer dollars to send staff and members down there,” Comer said. “If she’s going to plead the Fifth, I don’t know that that’s a good investment.”
Maxwell is imprisoned for 20 years after being convicted on child-sex-trafficking charges in 2022.
Comer subpoenaed her testimony in July, but Maxwell said she only would testify after the appeals she filed regarding her conviction were addressed.
The Supreme Court since has denied her request to reassess her conviction.
Maxwell also has sought immunity against future prosecutions in exchange for her committee testimony, which Comer said will not happen.
She did participate in a two-day deposition with the Justice Department in July and afterward was transferred from a Florida prison to a minimum-security prison in Texas.
FBI, police protect Epstein files storage
The location where the Justice Department’s Epstein investigation files is being guarded after Mark Epstein, brother of Jeffrey, on Tuesday accused the FBI of scrubbing the files of any mention of Republicans while they are being held at its Central Records facility in Winchester, Va., Bloomberg reported.
Mark Epstein claimed a “credible source” told him the files were being doctored, and his claim was shared on social media. Several people suggested protesting the FBI’s Winchester office and possibly seizing the files.
FBI officials deemed such comments to be viable threats against the facility and the files and enhanced its security at the location. Police officers also are protecting Central Records facility officials and staff.
Summers and wife visited Epstein’s island
While the FBI is more closely guarding the Epstein investigation files, The Boston Globe reported that former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and his wife, Elisa New, flew to Epstein’s privately owned Little Saint James island in the U.S. Virgin Islands 10 days after their 2005 wedding.
The trip was part of their extended honeymoon celebration and was a brief visit, Summers’ spokesperson Steven Goldberg.
Summers and New “have repeatedly expressed their regret for having any association with Jeffrey Epstein,” Goldberg said in a statement shared with the Boston newspaper Friday.
“Mr. Summers and Ms. New spent their honeymoon in St. John and Jamaica in December 2005, which was long before Mr. Epstein was arrested for the first time,” Goldberg said.
“As part of that trip, they made a brief visit of less than a day to Mr. Epstein’s island.”
Flight log records indicate Summers and New flew aboard Epstein’s private plane when they traveled from Bedford, Mass., to Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, on Dec. 21, 2005.
They met with Maxwell and Epstein’s personal pilot, Larry Visoski, while on the island and during the same year that Florida investigators began looking into Epstein’s activities.
Despite Epstein’s subsequent arrest and guilty plea to two state charges that resulted in his designation as a sex offender and a year in jail, Summers, who also is a former Harvard University president, continued his friendly relationship with the financier.
That ended when Epstein was arrested in 2019 and later that year hung himself while jailed in New York City.
New also maintained her friendly relationship with Epstein and in 2014 thanked him for a donation that he made to support her academic research as a poetry professor at Harvard.
The financial gift from Epstein was not included in Harvard’s 2020 report regarding his activities involving the university.
New in 2018 also emailed Epstein regarding the novel Lolita, which is about an older man sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl, The Boston Globe reported.
1 of 2 | Larry Summers (R), then-director of the U.S. National Economic Council, pictured Feb. 2010 next to then-U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano at the White House in Washington, D.C. Summers, 70, revealed Monday that he will “step back” from all public duties, but it was unclear if that was to include his role with the artificial intelligence firm. File Photo by Andrew Harrer/UPI | License Photo
Nov. 19 (UPI) — Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers will resign from the OpenAI board of directors following intensified scrutiny over emails between him and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, he announced Wednesday.
“I am grateful for the opportunity to have served, excited about the potential of the company, and look forward to following their progress,” Summers told CNBC and CNN in a statement.
Summers, 70, revealed Monday that he will “step back” from all public duties, but it was initially unclear if that was to include his role with the artificial intelligence startup.
This week, Summers said he was “deeply ashamed” after emails released last week revealed years of correspondence with the late billionaire financier and convicted sexual predator Epstein.
The AI company said it respected his decision.
“We appreciate his many contributions and the perspective he brought to the board,” the OpenAI board of directors said in a statement.
Summers, former secretary of the United States Treasury under former U.S. President Bill Clinton, was later president of Ivy League Harvard University from 2001 to 2006 and director of the National Economic Council under then-President Barack Obama.
Nov. 16 (UPI) — Rep. Thomas Massie said as many as 100 Republicans may vote to release files related to convicted sex offender Jeffery Epstein, amid a last-ditch effort by the White House to stall their release.
Massie, R-Ky., said Sunday on ABC News’ This Week that at least 100 Republicans will join Democrats in the House and vote this week for the rest of the Epstein documents to be released.
President Donald Trump this week also ordered the Department of Justice to investigate Democrats and their supporters whose names appear in the files after more than 20,000 documents related to Epstein were released by Congress.
With newly sworn in Rep. Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz., there were enough members of the House to sign a discharge petition forcing a vote on whether to force the Department of Justice to release all of the files it has on Epstein — over the objections of Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and other Republicans in Congress.
Massie cautioned that while there are ways to push the Senate to vote on the bill, the chamber does not have a discharge petition-like method to force a vote over the objection of the majority leader. If the bill passes both houses of Congress, Trump still would have to sign it.
But Massie also noted that Trump’s order to the Department of Justice could potentially delay some part of the documents from being released, regardless of what Congress does.
“If they have ongoing investigations in certain areas, those documents can’t be released,” he said. “So, this might be a big smokescreen, these investigations, to open a bunch of them to, as a last-ditch effort to prevent the release of the Epstein files.”
Trump has fought the release of the files, at least partially because of widespread speculation that he figures prominently in them over of his years-long friendship with Epstein.
Despite the president’s claims that “Jeffery Epstein and I had a very bad relationship for many years,” they were close for more than a decade before the friendship went south.
“This is a hoax put out by the Democrats and a couple, a few Republicans have gone along with it because they’re weak and ineffective,” Trump said about the Democrats push for the release of the files.
Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi and the FBI to investigate alleged Epstein ties to former President Bill Clinton and other Democrats whose names appear in the files.
Bondi said last week that she would pursue the investigation with “urgency and integrity to deliver answers to the American people.”
Bondi announced that Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton will lead the investigation just days after the House Oversight Committee released tens of thousands of emails released by Epstein’s estate, which documented his ties to friends and associates over a decade.
The emails made several direct references to Trump, Clinton and prominent media figures, Hollywood personalities and high-ranking politicians.
Posters calling for the release of the Epstein files are displayed on a wall in Washington, D.C., in September. On Friday, President Donald Trump announced on social media that he wants an investigation into former President Bill Clinton’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, along with others. File Photo by Annabelle Gordon/UPI | License Photo
Nov. 14 (UPI) — President Donald Trump posted on social media Friday that he wants an investigation into former President Bill Clinton and others mentioned in the Jeffrey Epstein emails released this week.
On Wednesday, Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a cache of emails between convicted sex traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and others that talked about Trump repeatedly. The emails were released by Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the committee.
“Now that the Democrats are using the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans, to try and deflect from their disastrous SHUTDOWN, and all of their other failures, I will be asking [Attorney General] Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats. Records show that these men, and many others, spent large portions of their life with Epstein, and on his ‘Island.’ Stay tuned!!!”
JP Morgan Chase issued a statement in response. Spokeswoman Patricia Wexler said in a statement it “ended our relationship with him years before his arrest on sex trafficking charges.”
“The government had damning information about his crimes and failed to share it with us or other banks,” Wexler said. “We regret any association we had with the man, but did not help him commit his heinous acts.”
The White House continued to defend the president.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday, “These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments, and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again.”
The House of Representatives is expected to pass legislation that demands the government release all files related to Epstein, who died by suicide in a jail cell. The discharge petition has enough signatures now that Rep. Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz., was sworn in. Though it should pass the House, it’s not certain to pass the Senate.
When Donald Trump apologized for saying in 2005 that he could grope women because of his celebrity, he immediately pointed to Bill Clinton as having done worse. Trump appeared before a debate alongside Clinton’s accusers and again mentioned the former president’s past while onstage with Hillary Clinton. But Trump’s argument was undercut when more women publicly came forward with allegations that he had groped or kissed them without consent.
Here’s a look at the pasts of both Trump and Bill Clinton and accusations against them.
Donald Trump
In a screen grab of a 2005 “Access Hollywood” video, Donald Trump prepares for his cameo on “Days of Our Lives” with actress Arianne Zucker and Billy Bush, right, then “Access” co-host. (Getty)
(Getty)
1977, 31-year-old Trump
Trump marries his first wife, Ivana Trump
Donald Trump Jr. is born
Early-1980s, 30-something Donald Trump
Allegation: While Trump was seated next to her on a plane, businesswoman Jessica Leeds said, he lifted her armrest and touched her inappropriately.
“He was like an octopus,” Leeds, now 74, told the New York Times. “His hands were everywhere.”
Response: Trump called it a “ridiculous tale.” At a rally in North Carolina, he said, “She would not be my first choice.”
Allegation: Ivana Trump used the word “rape” in a 1992 deposition during their divorce to describe an encounter with Trump when they were married in 1989. In 2015, after the allegation resurfaced, she said it was “without merit” and that she had made it “at a time of very high tension during my divorce from Donald.”
Response: After the allegation resurfaced last summer, Michael Cohen, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, incorrectly said that a man cannot legally rape his wife. Many states have laws outlawing marital rape. Trump distanced himself from that statement.
Early 1990s, 40-something Trump
Allegation: Kristin Anderson told the Washington Post that when she was at a Manhattan nightclub, someone sitting next to her “touched her vagina through her underwear.” Anderson said she fled the couch and only then realized it was Trump.
Response: “Mr. Trump strongly denies this phony allegation by someone looking to get some free publicity. It is totally ridiculous,” Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said to the Post.
1991, 44-year-old Trump
Ivana Trump files for divorce.
1992, 45-year-old Trump
Accusation: Donald Trump reportedly talked about dating young girls once they reached maturity. A 1992 wire service report said he joked to 14-year-old girls that he’d be dating them “in a few years.” In CBS footage from around the same time, he says of a 10-year-old girl that he’d be “dating her in 10 years.”
Response: Trump has not commented specifically on those allegations.
Accusation: Jill Harth filed a sexual assault lawsuit against Trump, alleging that while working on a beauty competition with him, he harassed her to the point of what she called “attempted rape.”
“He pushed me up against the wall, and had his hands all over me and tried to get up my dress again,” she told the Guardian. “And I had to physically say: ‘What are you doing? Stop it.’”
Response: In an interview with CNN on Friday, Trump said he was the victim of a political smear campaign.
1993, 46-year-old Trump
Tiffany Trump is born.
Trump marries Marla Maples.
1997, 50-year-old Trump
Trump and Marla Maples separate.
Accusation: Temple Taggart told the New York Times that when she was Miss Utah, Trump kissed her on the lips without consent.
Response: Trump has denied the allegations.
1998, 51-year-old Trump
Accusation: During a press conference with Gloria Allred on Thursday, Karena Virginia said Trump approached her after the 1998 U.S. Open tennis tournament in Flushing, N.Y. He then grabbed her arm and touched her breast.
“Don’t you know who I am?” Virginia said Trump asked her when she flinched.
Response: “Gloria Allred, in another coordinated, publicity seeking attack with the Clinton campaign, will stop at nothing to smear Mr. Trump,” Trump spokeswoman Jessica Ditto said. “Give me a break. Voters are tired of these circus-like antics and reject these fictional stories and the clear efforts to benefit Hillary Clinton.”
1999, 52-year-old Trump
Trump and Marla Maples divorce
2003, 56-year-old Trump
Accusation:Mindy McGillivray says Trump groped her at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida while she was working with a photographer at the site. She was 23.
Response: Trump has denied the allegations.
2005, 58-year-old Trump
Trump marries Melania Trump
Allegation: Trump makes lewd comments about groping women.
Response: Apologized, calling it “locker room talk,” while dismissing it as a distraction.
Accusation: Rachel Crooks says Trump kissed her without permission outside an elevator bank at Trump Tower in Manhattan when she was 22.
Response: Trump denied the allegations. When questioned by a New York Times reporter, he told the journalist, “You are a disgusting human being.”
2006, 59-year-old Trump
Barron Trump is born.
Allegation: During a Saturday press conference with Gloria Allred, adult film star Jessica Drake said she met Trump in 2006 at a golf tournament in Lake Tahoe where she said he made sexual advances toward her and two friends.
“When we entered the room he grabbed each of us tightly in a hug and kissed each one of us without asking permission,” Drake said, releasing a posed photo she took with Trump at the event.
Drake said that later, Trump or a “male speaking on his behalf” offered her $10,000 and use of his private jet for sex. She said she declined.
Response: “This story is totally false and ridiculous. The picture is one of thousands taken out of respect for people asking to have their picture taken with Mr. Trump,” Trump’s campaign said in a statement. “Mr. Trump does not know this person, does not remember this person and would have no interest in ever knowing her.”
2007, 60-year-old Trump
Accusation: Former “Apprentice” contestant Summer Zervos says Trump invited her into his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel and proceeded to kiss her against her will, groped her and shoved his genitals towards her.
Response: “To be clear, I never met her at a hotel or greeted her inappropriately a decade ago. That is not who I am as a person, and it is not how I’ve conducted my life,” Trump said in a statement.
Bill Clinton
President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
(Getty Images)
1975, 29-year-old Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton marries Hillary Rodham.
Mid-1970s to 1992, 30- to 40-something Clinton
Allegation:Dolly Kyle Browning, a high school friend of Clinton’s, said she had an occasional sexual relationship with him over about 15 years.
Response: Clinton has not publicly responded.
1978, 32-year-old Clinton
Allegation:Juanita Broaddrick said in 1999 that when Clinton was Arkansas governor, he invited her to a hotel room where she said he kissed, then raped her.
Response: Clinton denied the allegations.
1980, 34-year-old Clinton
Chelsea Clinton is born.
1982, 36-year-old Clinton
Allegation: In 1998, Elizabeth Ward Gracen said she had had a consensual one-night stand with Clinton when he was Arkansas governor in 1982. It was the same year she won the title of Miss America.
Response: Clinton denied the allegations.
1983, 37-year-old Clinton
Allegation: In 1994, 1958’s Miss Arkansas, Sally Perdue, said she had an affair with Clinton the previous year. She claimed that a Democratic staffer told her not to reveal any information, and was warned “they knew that I went jogging by myself and he couldn’t guarantee what would happen to my pretty little legs.”
Response: He has not publicly responded to the allegation.
1991, 44-year-old Clinton
Allegation: Paula Jones said a state trooper asked her to meet then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton in his hotel room. Jones said that Clinton dropped his pants and underwear and told her to “kiss it.” She refused.
Jones sued Clinton for sexual harassment in 1998, prompting the investigation that culminated in the revelation of Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Response: Clinton settled a sexual harassment suit with Jones with no apology or admission of guilt.
1980-1992, 45-year-old Clinton
Allegation: During Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992, Gennifer Flowers said she had had a 12-year sexual relationship with him.
Response: Clinton admitted to a sexual affair with Flowers while under oath in 1998.
1993, 46-year-old Bill Clinton
Allegation: In 1998, Kathleen Willey alleged Clinton groped her without permission in the Oval Office.
Response: Clinton denied the encounter while under oath in 1998.
1995-1996, 49-year-old Bill Clinton
Allegation:Monica Lewinsky’s affair with Bill Clinton surfaced in 1998, when Lewinsky’s friend Linda Tripp learned that she had signed an affidavit in the Paula Jones case denying her relationship with Clinton. Tripp handed secret recordings of Lewinsky’s account of the affair to investigator Kenneth Starr.
Response: Clinton initially denied the allegations.
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” he said famously.
Clinton later admitted to the affair, and the House of Representatives voted to impeach him.
Updated at 11:10 a.m. on Oct. 24, 2016: This story was updated with Jessica Drake’s statements.
Updated at 1:20 p.m. on Oct. 20, 2016: This story was updated with Karena Virginia’s statements.
This article was originally published at 3:35 p.m. on Oct. 19, 2016.
Nov. 5 (UPI) — A federal district judge on Wednesday ordered authorities to improve conditions inside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building near Chicago.
U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman, calling the conditions “unnecessarily cruel,” acted on a class action lawsuit Wednesday after hearing several hours of testimony from five people detained at the Broadview immigration detention site west of Chicago.
“People shouldn’t be sleeping next to overflowing toilets,” Gettleman, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, said. “They should not be sleeping on top of each other.”
The four-page order also mandates detainees to be able to contact their attorneys. The order on the class action lawsuit will run from Nov. 19, when he will have another hearing though the Trump administration was told to give him a status by Friday on complying with the order.
“The court finds that plaintiffs and members of the punitive class have suffered, and are likely to suffer, irreparable harm absent the temporary relief granted herein, that they are likely to prevail on the merits of the claims, that the balance of the equities tips in their favor,” he said.
They also must be provided with a shower at least every other day; clean toilet facilities; three full meals per day; a bottle of water with each meal; adequate supplies of soap, toilet paper, and other hygiene products; and menstrual products and prescribed medications.
Holding cells also must be cleaned at least twice a day.
Regarding legal defense, detainees must have free and private phone calls with their attorneys and a list of pro bono attorneys in English and Spanish.
And they must be listed in ICE’s online detainee locator system as soon as they arrive at the Broadview facility.
The judge heard several hours of testimony about conditions at the building, which is intended to hold detainees for a few hours.
They described the inadequate food, sleeping conditions, medical care and bathrooms near where they slept. They said they slept on the floor or on plastic chairs.
The lawsuit claimed the facility “cut off detainees from the outside world,” which the government has denied.
The judge didn’t act on the plaintiff’s request to limit how many people would be kept in holding cells and limit them to not more than 12 hours if the changes aren’t enacted.
The U.S. government said the restrictions would “halt the government’s ability to enforce immigration law in Illinois.”
