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ATLANTA — The head of a nonpartisan agency tasked with finding a prosecutor to take over the Georgia election interference case against President Trump and others is asking for more time after a judge set a two-week deadline for that appointment to be made.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who’s overseeing the case, wrote in an order Friday that if the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council doesn’t appoint a new prosecutor or request a “particularized extension” within 14 days, he would dismiss it. The fate of the case has been in limbo since Fulton County District Atty. Fani Willis was disqualified from continuing the prosecution over an “appearance of impropriety” caused by a romantic relationship she had with the lead prosecutor.

Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council, said in a court filing Monday that his office has yet to receive the physical case file and does not expect to receive it for about four weeks. He asked McAfee to reconsider his order or to give him at least 90 days after he receives the case file to appoint a new prosecutor.

Without the case file, Skandalakis wrote that he “cannot intelligently answer questions of anyone requested to take the appointment or to do his own due diligence in finding a prosecutor who is not encumbered by a significant appearance of impropriety.”

He noted the case is one of 21 waiting to have a prosecutor assigned by his office. So far in 2025, he wrote, 448 criminal matters have been referred to his office because of a conflict of interest or a recusal by the relevant elected prosecutor.

“Each case requires individual review and assignment due to the unique nature of conflicts and the facts and circumstances of the particular case,” he wrote. Because of the complexity of the election case and the extensive resources required to handle it, “it will require time” to find someone to take it on, the filing says.

Even if a new prosecutor is named, it is unlikely that any prosecution against Trump could move forward while he is the sitting president. But there are 14 other people still facing charges in the case, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.

If a new prosecutor is named, that person could continue on the track that Willis had charted, decide to pursue only some charges or dismiss the case altogether.

Willis announced the indictment against Trump and 18 others in August 2023. She used the state’s anti-racketeering law to allege a wide-ranging conspiracy to try to illegally overturn Trump’s narrow loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

Defense attorneys sought Willis’ removal after the revelation in January 2024 that she had engaged in a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she had hired to lead the case. The defense attorneys said the relationship created a conflict of interest, alleging that Willis personally profited from the case when Wade used his earnings to pay for vacations the pair took.

McAfee rebuked Willis, saying in an order in March 2024 that her actions showed a “tremendous lapse in judgment.” But he said he did not find a conflict of interest that would disqualify Willis. He ultimately ruled that Willis could remain on the case if Wade resigned, which the special prosecutor did hours later.

Defense attorneys appealed that ruling, and the Georgia Court of Appeals removed Willis from the case in December, citing an “appearance of impropriety.” The high court last month declined to hear Willis’ appeal, putting the case in the lap of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council.

Brumback writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose case has come to encapsulate much of President Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda, wants to seek asylum in the United States, his lawyers told a federal judge Wednesday.

Abrego Garcia, 30, was detained Monday by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement in Baltimore after leaving a Tennessee jail on Friday. The Trump administration said it intends to deport him to the African country of Uganda.

Administration officials have said he’s part of the dangerous MS-13 gang, an allegation Abrego Garcia denies.

The Salvadoran national’s lawyers are fighting the deportation efforts in court, arguing he has the right to express fear of persecution and torture in Uganda. Abrego Garcia has also told immigration authorities he would prefer to be sent to Costa Rica if he must be removed from the U.S.

A request for asylum in 2019

A U.S. immigration judge denied his request for asylum in 2019 because he applied more than a year after he had fled to the U.S. He left El Salvador at the age of 16, around 2011, to join his brother, who had become a U.S. citizen and was living in Maryland.

Although he was denied asylum, the immigration judge did issue an order shielding Abrego Garcia from deportation to El Salvador because he faced credible threats of violence from a gang there that had terrorized him and his family. He was granted a form of protection known as “withholding of removal,” which prohibits him from being sent to El Salvador but allows his deportation to another country.

Following the 2019 ruling, Abrego Garcia was released under federal supervision and continued to live with his American wife and children in Maryland. He checked in with ICE each year, received a federal work permit and was working as a sheet metal apprentice earlier this year, his lawyers have said.

But in March, the Trump administration deported Abrego Garcia to a notorious El Salvador prison, alleging he was a member of MS-13.

The allegation stems from a day in 2019 when Abrego Garcia sought work as a day laborer at a Home Depot in Maryland. Authorities had been told by a confidential informant that Abrego Garcia and other men could be identified as members of MS-13 because of their clothing and tattoos. He was detained by police, but Abrego Garcia was never charged — and has repeatedly denied the allegation. He was turned over to ICE and that’s when he applied for asylum for the first time.

Wrongful deportation and return

The Trump administration’s deportation of Abrego Garcia in March violated the immigration judge’s 2019 order barring his removal to El Salvador. Abrego Garcia’s wife sued to bring him back. Facing mounting pressure and a U.S. Supreme Court order, the Trump administration returned Abrego Garcia to the U.S. in June, where he was charged with human smuggling, a federal offense.

Abrego Garcia is accused of taking money to transport people who were in the country illegally. He has pleaded not guilty and asked the judge to dismiss the case, saying it was filed to punish him for challenging his deportation.

The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop for speeding in Tennessee. There were nine passengers in the SUV and Abrego Garcia had $1,400 in cash on him. While officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling, he was allowed to drive away with only a warning.

A Homeland Security agent testified that he didn’t begin investigating until this April, when the government was facing mounting pressure to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. The trial is set for January.

A federal judge in Tennessee released Abrego Garcia from jail on Friday after ruling that he was not a flight risk or a danger. The Trump administration moved to deport Abrego Garcia again on Monday, alleging he is a danger.

Abrego Garcia then stated his intent to reopen his immigration case in Maryland and to seek asylum again, his lawyers said Wednesday. Asylum, as defined under U.S. law, provides a green card and a path to citizenship. Abrego Garcia can still challenge his deportation to Uganda, or any other country, on grounds that it is unsafe.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers say sending him to Uganda would be punishment for successfully fighting his deportation to El Salvador, refusing to plead guilty to the smuggling charges and for seeking release from jail in Tennessee.

Judge keeps Abrego Garcia in the U.S., for now

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have filed a federal lawsuit to ensure that he can exercise his constitutionally protected right to fight deportation. He is entitled to immigration court proceedings and appeals, his lawyers say.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland, who is overseeing the lawsuit, has ruled that the U.S. government cannot remove Abrego Garcia from the country as the lawsuit plays out.

Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign said the government disagrees with the court’s order not to remove him while the lawsuit is pending but that it will comply.

Xinis will not rule on whether Abrego Garcia receives asylum or is deported, but will determine whether he can exercise his right to contest deportation. His asylum case will be heard by a U.S. immigration judge, who is employed by the Department of Justice under the authority of the Trump administration.

The nation’s immigration courts have become a key focus of Trump’s hard-line immigration enforcement efforts. The president has fired more than 50 immigration judges since he returned to the White House in January.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have said he’ll be able to appeal immigration court rulings to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Kunzelman and Finley write for the Associated Press. Finley reported from Norfolk, Va. AP writer Elliot Spagat contributed to this report.

Stronger police presence is called for to monitor the former president, who is under house arrest awaiting trial.

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has requested the police to tighten security around former President Jair Bolsonaro’s home while he is under house arrest.

Moraes on Monday sent a notice to police calling for full-time monitoring near Bolsonaro’s house to ensure he is complying with the restraining orders against him.

Earlier this month, the embattled former president was placed under house arrest after Moraes determined that he had violated precautionary measures imposed by the court restricting his social media use and political messaging.

Police said last week that they had found a draft letter on Bolsonaro’s phone of a request for asylum in Argentina. It was last edited in 2024, police said.

Bolsonaro’s legal defence said the document was not evidence that the former president was a flight risk.

Bolsonaro’s trial is expected to start on September 2. The former president faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted of plotting to overthrow his democratically elected successor as president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in 2022.

His case has been a flashpoint for the administration of United States President Donald Trump, who insists it is a witch-hunt against his former ally.

Last month, Trump imposed 50 percent tariffs on Brazil, directly tying the levy to the trial of his fellow right-wing politician, Bolsonaro. That was followed by sanctions against Moraes, with the Trump administration accusing the judge of “arbitrary detentions that violate human rights”.

As measles surged in Texas early this year, the Trump administration’s actions sowed fear and confusion among Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists that kept them from performing the agency’s most critical function — emergency response — when it mattered most, an investigation from KFF Health News shows.

The outbreak soon became the worst the United States has endured in more than three decades.

In the month after Donald Trump took office, his administration interfered with CDC communications, stalled the federal agency’s reports, censored its data and abruptly laid off staff. In the chaos, agency experts felt restrained from talking openly with local public health workers, according to interviews with seven CDC officials with direct knowledge of events, as well as local health department emails obtained by KFF Health News through public records requests.

“CDC hasn’t reached out to us locally,” Katherine Wells, the public health director in Lubbock, Texas, wrote in a Feb. 5 email exchange with a colleague two weeks after children with measles were hospitalized in Lubbock. “My staff feels like we are out here all alone,” she added.

A child would die before CDC scientists contacted Wells.

“All of us at CDC train for this moment, a massive outbreak,” one CDC researcher told KFF Health News, which agreed not to name CDC officials who fear retaliation for speaking with the press. “All this training and then we weren’t allowed to do anything.”

Delays have catastrophic consequences when measles spreads in undervaccinated communities, including many in west Texas. If a person with measles is in the same room with 10 unvaccinated people, nine will be infected, researchers estimate. If those nine go about their lives in public spaces, numbers multiply exponentially.

The outbreak that unfolded in west Texas illustrates the danger the country faces under the Trump administration as vaccination rates drop, misinformation flourishes, public health budgets are cut, and science agencies are subject to political manipulation.

While the Trump administration stifled CDC communications, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fueled doubt about vaccines and exaggerated the ability of vitamins to ward off disease. Suffering followed: The Texas outbreak spread to New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and Mexico’s Chihuahua state — at minimum. Together these linked outbreaks have sickened more than 4,500 people, killed at least 16, and levied exorbitant costs on hospitals, health departments, and those paying medical bills.

“This is absolutely outrageous,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University. “When you’re battling contagious diseases, time is everything.”

‘The CDC Is “Stressed” Currently’

Wells was anxious the moment she learned that two unvaccinated children hospitalized in late January had the measles. Hospitals are legally required to report measles cases to health departments and the CDC, but Wells worried many children weren’t getting tested.

“I think this may be very large,” she wrote in a Feb. 3 email to the Texas Department of State Health Services. Wells relayed in another email what she’d learned from conversations around town: “According to one of the women I spoke with 55 children were absent from one school on 1/24. The women reported that there were sick children with measles symptoms as early as November.”

In that email and others, Wells asked state health officials to put her in touch with CDC experts who could answer complicated questions on testing, how to care for infants exposed to measles, and more. What transpired was a plodding game of telephone.

One email asked whether clinics could decontaminate rooms where people with measles had just been if the clinics were too small to follow the CDC’s recommendation to keep those rooms empty for two hours.

“Would it be possible to arrange a consultation with the CDC?” Wells wrote on Feb. 5.

“It never hurts to ask the CDC,” said Scott Milton, a medical officer at the Texas health department. About 25 minutes later, he told Wells that an information specialist at the CDC had echoed the guidelines advising two hours.

“I asked him to escalate this question to someone more qualified,” Milton wrote. “Of course, we know the CDC is ‘stressed’ currently.”

Local officials resorted to advice from doctors and researchers outside the government, including those at the Immunization Partnership, a Texas nonprofit.

“The CDC had gone dark,” said Terri Burke, executive director of the partnership. “We had anticipated a measles outbreak, but we didn’t expect the federal government to be in collapse when it hit.”

Technically, the Trump administration’s freeze on federal communications had ended Feb. 1. However, CDC scientists told KFF Health News that they could not speak freely for weeks after.

“There was a lot of confusion and nonanswers over what communications were allowed,” one CDC scientist said.

Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Assn., said the situation was not unique to measles. “Like most public health organizations, we weren’t able to get ahold of our program people in February,” he said. Information trickled out through the CDC’s communications office, but CDC scientists gave no news briefings and went dark on their closest partners across the country. “The CDC was gagged,” he said.

Through private conversations, Benjamin learned that CDC experts were being diverted to remove information from websites to comply with executive orders. And they were afraid to resume communication without a green light from their directors or the Department of Health and Human Services as they watched the Trump administration lay off CDC staffers in droves.

“It’s not that the CDC was delinquent,” Benjamin said. “It’s that they had their hands tied behind their backs.”

To work on the ground, the CDC needs an invitation from the state. But Anne Schuchat, a former CDC deputy director, said that during her 33 years with the agency, federal health officials didn’t need special permission to talk freely with local health departments during outbreaks. “We would always offer a conversation and ask if there’s anything we could do,” she said.

Lara Anton, a press officer at the Texas health department, said the state never prevented the CDC from calling county officials. To learn more about the state’s correspondences with the CDC, KFF Health News filed a public records request to the Texas health department. The department refused to release the records. Anton called the records “confidential under the Texas Health and Safety Code.”

Anton said the state sent vaccines, testing supplies, and staff to assist west Texas in the early weeks of February. That’s corroborated in emails from the South Plains Public Health District, which oversees Gaines County, the area hit hardest by measles.

“Texas will try to handle what it needs to before it goes to the CDC,” Zach Holbrooks, the health district’s executive director, told KFF Health News.

Responding to an outbreak in an undervaccinated community, however, requires enormous effort. To keep numbers from exploding, public health workers ideally would notify all people exposed to an infected person and ask them to get vaccinated immediately if they weren’t already. If they declined, officials would try to persuade them to avoid public spaces for three weeks so that they wouldn’t spread measles to others.

Holbrooks said this was nearly impossible. Cases were concentrated in close-knit Mennonite communities where people relied on home remedies before seeking medical care. He said many people didn’t want to be tested, didn’t want to name their contacts, and didn’t want to talk with the health department. “It doesn’t matter what resources I have if people won’t avail themselves of it,” Holbrooks said.

Historically, Mennonites faced persecution in other countries, making them leery of interacting with authorities, Holbrooks said. A backlash against COVID-19 pandemic restrictions deepened that mistrust.

Another reason Mennonites may seek to avoid authorities is that some live in the U.S. illegally, having immigrated to Texas from Canada, Mexico and Bolivia in waves over the last 50 years. Locals guess the population of Seminole, the main city in Gaines County, is far larger than the U.S. census count.

“I have no idea how many cases we might have missed, since I don’t know how many people are in the community,” Holbrooks said. “There’s a lot of people in the shadows out here.”

Public health experts say the situation in Gaines sounds tough but familiar. Measles tends to take hold in undervaccinated communities, and therefore public health workers must overcome mistrust, misinformation, language barriers and more.

About 450 people — including local health officials, CDC scientists, nurses and volunteers — helped control a measles outbreak in an Eastern European immigrant community in Clark County, Wash., in 2018.

Alan Melnick, Clark County’s public health director, said his team spoke with hundreds of unvaccinated people who were exposed. “We were calling them basically every day to see how they were doing and ask them not to go out in public,” he said.

Melnick spoke with CDC scientists from the start, and the intensity of the response was buoyed by emergency declarations by the county and the state. Within a couple of months, the outbreak was largely contained. No one died, and only two people were hospitalized.

In New York, hundreds of people in the city’s health department responded to a larger measles outbreak in 2018 and 2019 concentrated among Orthodox Jewish communities. The work included meeting with dozens of rabbis and distributing booklets to nearly 30,000 households to combat vaccine misinformation.

The effort cost more than $7 million, but Jane Zucker, New York City’s assistant health commissioner at the time, said it yielded immense savings. The average medical bill for measles hospitalizations is roughly $18,500, according to data from prior outbreaks. Then there’s the cost of diverting hospital resources, of children missing school, of parents staying home from work to care for sick kids, and the lasting toll of some measles infections, including deafness or worse.

“I don’t think there’s a price tag to put on a child’s death that would otherwise be prevented,” Zucker said.

Local health departments in west Texas were understaffed from the start. About 18 people work at the South Plains health department, which oversees four vast rural counties. About 50 staff the department in Lubbock, where patients were hospitalized and health workers struggled to figure out who was exposed. In mid-February, Wells emailed a colleague: “I’m so overwhelmed.”

A Death Ignites a Response

On Feb. 26, Texas announced that a 6-year-old child had died of measles. Wells heard from CDC scientists for the first time the following day. Also that day, the CDC issued a brief notice on the outbreak. The notice recommended vaccines, but it worried public health specialists because it also promoted vitamin A as a treatment under medical supervision.

In emails, Texas health officials privately discussed how the CDC’s notice might exacerbate a problem: Doctors were treating children with measles for toxic levels of vitamin A, suggesting that parents were delaying medical care and administering the supplements at home. A local Lubbock news outlet reported on a large drugstore where vitamin A supplements and cod liver oil, which contains high levels of vitamin A, were “flying off the shelf.”

Too much vitamin A can cause liver damage, blindness and dire abnormalities during fetal development.

Milton worried that parents were listening to misinformation from anti-vaccine groups — including one founded by Kennedy — that diminished the need for vaccination by inaccurately claiming that vitamin A staved off the disease’s worst outcomes.

“How many people will choose Vitamin A and not a vaccine because it appears to them there are two options?” Milton asked in an email.

Scientists at the CDC privately fretted too. “HHS pressed us to insert vitamin A into all of our communications with clinicians and health officials,” one CDC scientist told KFF Health News, referring to the agency’s notices and alerts. “If pregnant women took too much vitamin A during the outbreak, their babies could be profoundly disabled. We haven’t seen those babies born yet.”

Another CDC official said they’ve had to “walk a fine line” between protecting the public based on scientific evidence and aligning with Health and Human Services.

While CDC scientists held their tongues, Kennedy exaggerated the power of nutrition and vitamin A while furthering mistrust in vaccines. “We’re providing vitamin A,” Kennedy said in an interview on Fox News. “There are many studies, some showing 87% effectiveness,” he claimed, “against serious disease and death.”

The studies Kennedy referenced were conducted in low-income countries where children are malnourished. Evidence suggests that vitamin A supplementation is seldom useful against measles in the United States because deficiency is exceedingly rare.

Kennedy deflected criticism from those who call him anti-vaccine, saying that any parent in Texas who wants a measles vaccine can get one. He followed this with dangerously inaccurate statements. “There are adverse events from the vaccine. It does cause deaths every year,” he said. “It causes all the illnesses that measles itself causes, encephalitis and blindness, etc.” There is no evidence that measles vaccines “cause deaths every year.” Scores of studies show that the vaccine doesn’t cause encephalitis, that most potential side effects resolve quickly on their own, and serious adverse reactions are far rarer than measles complications.

In another interview, Kennedy said, “The MMR vaccine contains a lot of aborted fetus debris.” The measles, mumps, and rubella, or MMR, vaccine does not contain an iota of fetal cells.

Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon and spokespeople at the CDC did not respond to queries from KFF Health News.

‘Staff Are Exhausted’

Despite national attention after the country’s first measles death in a decade, west Texas was overwhelmed. In late February and March, hospital administrators and health officials exchanged emails about how to lobby for resources.

“Local hospitals are at capacity,” wrote Jeffrey Hill, a senior vice president at the University Medical Center Health System in Lubbock. “The state reports emergency funds that typically cover a response like the measles outbreak are not available from the federal government right now,” he added.

“I am writing to express our urgent need for additional staff and funding,” Ronald Cook, medical director for Lubbock, said in an email, drafted with other Lubbock health authorities, to the deputy city manager. “Our Capacity is Stretched Thin: The health department has been operating seven days a week since February 2nd. Staff are exhausted.”

The city of Lubbock fronted money to help the local health department hire temporary staff. The state did not provide money, but it asked the CDC to send epidemiologists. Some came to Texas in early March. Then Texas requested federal funds.

None arrived, even as the outbreak approached 500 cases. It spread to Mexico when an unvaccinated Mennonite child returned home after visiting family in Seminole. This would fuel the largest outbreak Mexico has seen in decades, with at least 3,700 cases and 13 deaths in the state of Chihuahua.

Then another child in west Texas died of measles.

In a rare moment of openness, CDC scientist David Sugarman mentioned the outbreak at a vaccine advisory meeting in late April. “There are quite a number of resource requests coming in, in particular from Texas,” Sugarman said. “We are scraping to find the resources and personnel needed to provide support to Texas and other jurisdictions.”

Federal funds arrived in Texas on May 21, said Anton, the state health department spokesperson. By then, the crisis was fading. The outbreak seemed to have spread until every unvaccinated person in Seminole was infected, said Richard Eby, a doctor at Permian Regional Medical Center who treated some measles patients. Hundreds, if not thousands, of cases have probably gone undetected, he said. “A lot of people presumed their kids had measles,” he said, “and didn’t see the need to confirm it.”

On Aug. 18, health officials declared the west Texas outbreak over, but the consequences of the catastrophe will be lasting.

The outbreaks it sparked across the U.S. and Mexico are still spreading.

More are inevitable, Nuzzo said. A growing number of parents are deciding to not vaccinate their kids, worried over unfounded rumors about the shots. Misinformation is flourishing, especially after Kennedy fired vaccine experts who advise the CDC and replaced them with doctors and researchers on the fringes of the scientific establishment. For example, one of his recent appointees, Robert Malone, blamed the deaths of children with measles on “medical mismanagement,” without evidence.

At the same time, states are downsizing programs for emergency response, disease surveillance, and immunization after the Trump administration clawed back more than $11 billion in public health funds this year.

Amid Lubbock’s toughest months, Wells sent an email to the department’s exhausted staff. “The future is uncertain, and I know this is an unsettling time for many of us,” she wrote. “Every day we show up and do our jobs is an act of resilience.”

Maxmen writes for KFF Health News, a national newsroom focused on in-depth journalism about health issues and a core program of KFF, a nonprofit organization specializing in health policy research, polling, and journalism. She can be reached at [email protected]

Aug. 8 (UPI) — The Department of Justice asked New York judges to unseal more evidence in the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell criminal cases, but it still wants to shield “personal identifying information.”

This is an expansion of Attorney General Pam Bondi‘s earlier request to courts to unseal five days of grand jury testimony in relation to the cases.

In July, a Florida judge refused to unseal transcripts related to a criminal case brought against Epstein for sex charges in the early 2000s. That case was resolved in a controversial plea deal that saw the billionaire financier serve about a year in prison.

The latest request is about Epstein’s 2019 criminal case in New York, which was dropped after he died by suicide in his jail cell. It also asks to unseal grand jury evidence in Maxwell’s case, which ended in her conviction and sentence of 20 years in prison.

The request to shield personal identifying information could protect others from being tied to the case.

“Any effort to redact third party names smacks of a cover up,” victim Annie Farmer said through her lawyer in an Aug. 5 letter to the court. Farmer testified for the prosecution in Maxwell’s 2021 criminal trial.

“To the extent any of Epstein’s and Maxwell’s enablers and co-conspirators who have thus far evaded accountability are implicated by the grand jury transcripts, their identities should not be shielded from the public,” Farmer’s lawyer, Sigrid McCawley, added. She added that victims’ identifications should be redacted.

The new request comes after the judges handling the requests — Richard Berman for the Epstein case and Paul Engelmayer for the Maxwell case — told the department to specify their positions.

The department requested to have until Aug. 14 to notify everyone who’s name appears on the evidence and update the judges.

Usually, grand jury proceedings and evidence are kept secret.

Meanwhile, advocacy group Democracy Forward filed suit Fridy against the Justice Department and the FBI for records on their handling of the Epstein investigation. It wants records about senior administration officials’ communication about Epstein documents and any correspondence between Epstein and President Donald Trump.

The group says it submitted requests under the Freedom of Information Act for the records related to communications about the case in late July that have not yet been fulfilled.

“The court should intervene urgently to ensure the public has access to the information they need about this extraordinary situation,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of the group, said in a statement. The federal government often shields records on criminal investigations from public view.

Maxwell earlier this week opposed the Justice Department effort to unseal the grand jury testimony. She said it would compromise her privacy and her potential to appeal.

Also earlier this week, the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., subpoenaed the Department of Justice, former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and several others for documents and testimony about Epstein.

The government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has petitioned the World Trade Organization for consultations to help alleviate the steep tariffs imposed on Brazil by the United States.

Sources within the Brazilian government confirmed the petition on Wednesday to news outlets like AFP and The Associated Press, on condition of anonymity.

The aim is to seek relief from the 50 percent tariff that US President Donald Trump slapped on Brazilian exports in response to the country’s prosecution of a former far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro.

That tariff — the highest Trump has imposed on any country in August — took effect on Wednesday. India, meanwhile, is expected to face 50 percent tariffs later this month, unless a deal is struck beforehand.

A request for consultations is usually the first step in the World Trade Organization’s trade dispute process. The organisation functions as an international arbiter in economic disputes, though its procedures for negotiating settlements can be lengthy and inconclusive.

Brazilian Vice President Geraldo Alckmin has estimated that 35.9 percent of the country’s exports to the US will be subject to the stiff taxes. That equals about 4 percent of Brazil’s total exports worldwide.

Retaliation over Bolsonaro prosecution

Trump unveiled the current tariff rate on July 9, in a letter addressed to Lula and published online.

Unlike other tariff-related letters at the time, Trump used the correspondence to launch into a barbed attack on the Brazilian government for its decision to prosecute Bolsonaro, an ally, over an alleged coup attempt.

“The way that Brazil has treated former President Bolsonaro, a Highly Respected Leader throughout the World during his Term, including by the United States, is an international disgrace,” Trump wrote.

Just as Trump did after his 2020 electoral defeat, Bolsonaro had publicly cast doubt on the results of a 2022 presidential race that saw him lose to Lula.

But behind the scenes, police and prosecutors allege that Bolsonaro conspired with his associates to overturn the results of the election.

One possible scenario was to declare a “state of siege” during Bolsonaro’s final days as president, as a means of calling up the military and suspending civil rights. Then, a new election would have been called, according to prosecutors.

Another idea allegedly floated among Bolsonaro’s allies was to poison Lula.

But Trump, who likewise faced criminal charges in the past for allegedly attempting to subvert the outcome of a vote, has defended Bolsonaro, calling the prosecution politically biased.

“This trial should not be taking place,” he wrote in the July 9 letter. “It is a Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!”

Several weeks later, on July 30, Trump followed up his tariff threat with an executive order that doubled down on his accusations.

Not only did Trump accuse Brazil of “politically persecuting” Bolsonaro, but he added that Brazil was guilty of “human rights abuses”, including the suppression of free speech, through its efforts to stem disinformation on social media.

“Recent policies, practices, and actions of the Government of Brazil threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” Trump wrote.

“Members of the Government of Brazil have taken actions that interfere with the economy of the United States, infringe the free expression rights of United States persons, violate human rights, and undermine the interest the United States has in protecting its citizens and companies.”

Lula speaks out

The executive order, however, included an annex that indicated certain products would not be subject to the new US tariffs. They included nuts, orange juice, coal, iron, tin and petroleum products.

Lula has claimed that Trump is impeding attempts to negotiate a trade deal between their two countries, a sentiment he repeated in an interview on Wednesday with the news agency Reuters.

“The day my intuition says Trump is ready to talk, I won’t hesitate to call him,” Lula told Reuters. “But today my intuition says he doesn’t want to talk. And I’m not going to humiliate myself.”

The three-term, left-wing president explained that he saw Trump’s tariff threats as part of a long history of US intervention in Brazil and Latin America more broadly.

“We had already pardoned the US intervention in the 1964 coup,” Lula said, referencing the overthrow of a Brazilian president that sparked a two-decade-long military dictatorship

“But this now is not a small intervention. It’s the president of the United States thinking he can dictate rules for a sovereign country like Brazil. It’s unacceptable.”

Lula added that he plans to bolster Brazil’s “national sovereignty” by reforming its mineral extraction policy to boost the local economy.

With the US tariffs in play, Lula also explained that he would reach out to members of the BRICS economic trading bloc, named for its founding members: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Trump, however, has threatened any BRICS-affiliated country with an additional 10-percent tariff.

Lula has been on an English-language media blitz since Trump announced the latest his latest slate of tariffs in July, warning that consumers across the world will be penalised.

Late last month, for instance, Lula gave his first interview to The New York Times newspaper in nearly 13 years.

When the Times asked what his reaction would be to the tariffs taking effect, Lula expressed ambivalence.

“I’m not going to cry over spilled milk,” he said. “If the United States doesn’t want to buy something of ours, we are going to look for someone who will.”

The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday asked California counties to provide it with lists of all inmates in their jails who are not American citizens, as well as the crimes they have been accused or convicted of and their scheduled release dates.

The Justice Department said in a statement that its “data requests” to the counties — including Los Angeles and San Francisco counties — were “designed to assist federal immigration authorities in prioritizing the removal of illegal aliens who committed crimes after illegally entering the United States.”

The requests add another layer to the Trump administration’s already roiling turf war with California over immigration policy and state and local sanctuary laws. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been swarming the region making thousands of arrests as part of President Trump’s call for mass deportations, and the Justice Department is already suing the city of Los Angeles over its sanctuary policy.

State officials have long defended California’s sanctuary policies, which generally forbid local authorities from enforcing civil immigration laws but provide for exceptions in cases involving criminal offenses. They have also criticized the administration and ICE agents for their recent arrest tactics in Southern California, including by citing figures that show that a majority of those arrested had no criminal convictions.

What immediate impact the demands would have — and whether they would spark a legal challenge from the state or counties — was not immediately clear. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department recently resumed transferring some jail inmates to ICE for the first time in years, citing criminal exceptions to state and local sanctuary laws.

A spokesperson for L.A. County referred questions about the request to the Sheriff’s Department.

Asked about the request during a Civilian Oversight Commission meeting Thursday morning, L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna said information about all county inmates is already publicly available on the department’s website.

“The minute you get booked, processed and you get Livescanned, that’s a national system, so agents of the federal government will know you’re in custody,” he said. “So it’s not that we’re notifying them, it’s an automatic notification based on your fingerprints.”

The Justice Department said that it hoped the counties would voluntarily comply with its requests. But if they do not, it said, it would “pursue all available means of obtaining the data, including through subpoenas or other compulsory process.”

It said that while “every illegal alien by definition violates federal law, those who go on to commit crimes after doing so show that they pose a heightened risk to our Nation’s safety and security.”

Not every noncitizen in the U.S. is in the country illegally, given that there are non-citizen permanent residents and other visa holders. However, as part of its immigration crackdown, the Trump administration has given heightened scrutiny to people in those categories, as well.

Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, in her own statement about the requests, said that removing “criminal illegal aliens” from the country was the administration’s “highest priority.”

“I look forward to cooperating with California’s county sheriffs to accomplish our shared duty of keeping Californians and all Americans safe and secure,” Bondi said.

In May, Luna’s department transferred inmates from its jails to ICE for the first time since early 2020. Between May and June, the department handed 20 inmates over to the federal agency.

At Thursday’s oversight meeting, Luna said the department received 995 civil detainer requests from ICE in 2024, and that it did not comply with any of them, which it is not legally required to do. But he said that the department had to turn over the 20 inmates because it received federal judicial warrants from federal authorities for each of them.

He said he expected such warrants to increase, which would increase the number of inmates turned over.

“Those are legal documents signed by a judge. We cannot deny those,” he said.

Max Huntsman, the county’s inspector general, and other experts have said the Sheriff’s Department is required by federal and state law to comply with the warrants, and the process is legal under state and local sanctuary policies.

Times staff writers Rebecca Ellis and Rachel Uranga contributed to this report.

Greece has suspended asylum applications for people arriving by sea for three months.

That has come about after a large rise in the number of people crossing the Mediterranean Sea from Libya to the Greek island of Crete.

Athens wants to stop their boats from even entering Greek waters.

Human rights groups said denying them asylum is against international law.

So can a change in policy really stop people heading to Europe? Are North African countries able to help in reducing the number of boats? And what are the likely outcomes of this suspension?

Presenter: Adrian Finighan

Guests:

Eleni Spathana – lawyer with Refugee Support Aegean and author of Legal Assistance for Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Greece

Amine Snoussi – political analyst and journalist

Marianna Karakoulaki – researcher at Birmingham University focusing on forced migration on Europe’s Eastern Mediterranean migratory route

SEOUL, June 24 (UPI) — South Korea has asked to be exempted from all U.S. reciprocal and product-specific tariffs at the first high-level talks under the new administration of President Lee Jae Myung, Seoul’s Trade Ministry said Tuesday.

Chief trade negotiator Yeo Han-koo held talks with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in Washington on Monday.

During the meeting, Yeo “emphasized the importance of gaining exemption from reciprocal tariffs and product tariffs, such as automobiles and steel, and reaffirmed the will of both sides to reach a mutually beneficial agreement as soon as possible,” the ministry said in a press release.

South Korea is facing 25% tariffs threatened by U.S. President Donald Trump as part of his sweeping package of “Liberation Day” trade measures. Trump announced the tariffs in April but quickly put their implementation on hold for 90 days — a deadline that is approaching on July 8.

Tariffs on steel and automobiles, two key industries in South Korea, are already in place.

Yeo told the U.S. side that tariff talks had been limited by political turmoil and a leadership vacuum in South Korea over the past several months, the ministry said. President Lee took office earlier this month in a snap election precipitated by former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s botched martial law attempt in December.

“Now that the new government has secured democratic legitimacy and mandate, there is an opportunity to advance full-scale negotiations,” Yeo said, according to the ministry.

He also stressed that the ongoing negotiations are not only about tariffs, but also aim to foster strategic cooperation across various manufacturing sectors.

“South Korea and the United States have closely linked industrial supply chains and require mutual cooperation, so we will work to establish a new framework for the manufacturing partnership between the two countries through these negotiations,” Yeo said.

The uncertain trade environment has shaken the export-dependent Asian powerhouse, which saw its economy unexpectedly shrink in the first quarter of the year.

In late May, the Bank of Korea lowered its GDP growth forecast for 2025 from 1.5% in February to 0.8%, citing a slow recovery in domestic demand and the expected impact of U.S. tariffs. At the same time, the central bank cut its benchmark interest rate for the fourth time since October, lowering it by a quarter percentage point to 2.5%.

Since taking office, President Lee has pledged to boost economic growth and support people’s livelihoods through fiscal stimulus and other policy measures.

Last week, the government announced a second supplementary budget worth more than $14.7 billion, which will include cash handouts, debt relief measures and investments in sectors such as construction and artificial intelligence.

The move follows a $10.1 billion package that was approved by parliament last month.

On Monday, Lee directed government ministries to address the economic fallout from the ongoing Middle East crisis, including adding measures to the upcoming supplementary budget, if necessary.

May 21 (UPI) — The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to block proceedings on a case looking to get information on the Department of Government Efficiency.

In an application to stay the orders of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking documents about DOGE under the Freedom of Information Act, Solicitor General John Sauer wrote that DOGE is exempt from such requests.

“The U.S. DOGE Service is a presidential advisory body within the Executive Office of the President. The President, in various executive orders, has tasked USDS with providing recommendations to him and to federal agencies on policy matters that the President has deemed important to his agenda,” Sauer wrote. “Given those advisory functions, USDS is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.”

The government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, filed a lawsuit against DOGE in February, which described DOGE as “a cadre of largely unidentified actors, whose status as government employees is unclear, controlling major government functions with no oversight.”

The CREW suit asked for DOGE to comply with its FOIA requests “and promptly disclose the requested records.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. ordered in May that DOGE must provide the requested information.

CREW responded to the request from Sauer to the Supreme Court with a statement Wednesday that said “While DOGE continues to attempt to fight transparency at every level of justice, we look forward to making our case that the Supreme Court should join the District Court and Court of Appeals in allowing discovery to go forward.”