☕ Trump v Murdoch, explained

Good morning!

A shout-out to Metallica, who announced a $3m donation to boost the number of community colleges to boost their career and technical education curricula. The ‘All Within My Hands’ program began in 2019 with a group of ten colleges, and is now operating in all 50 United States and Guam.

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Some headlines from this morning:

• Twenty-eight countries, including the U.S., Britain, Japan and European nations, issued a joint statement Monday demanding the war in Gaza "must end now," marking increasingly sharp criticism of Israel. The foreign ministers, including those from Australia and Canada, condemned what they called the "inhumane killing of civilians" and criticized Israel's restrictions on humanitarian aid delivery. The statement described as "horrifying" recent deaths of over 800 Palestinians seeking aid, according to Gaza's Health Ministry and the UN human rights office. The countries said Israel's aid delivery model "deprives Gazans of human dignity" and called its denial of humanitarian assistance "unacceptable".

• At least twenty-seven people died when a Bangladeshi military plane crashed into a school in the capital Dhaka on Monday. The aircraft hit Milestone School and College during class hours, injuring over 171 people, mostly students aged 8 to 14, according to doctors treating victims. Military authorities said the pilot, who also died, made "every effort to divert the aircraft away from densely populated areas" before the crash. Officials announced they would investigate the cause of the accident.

• The Trump administration banned Wall Street Journal reporters from the President's trip to Scotland after the paper reported Trump sent Jeffrey Epstein a lewd birthday letter in 2003. White House officials cited Thursday's WSJ story as grounds for the press ban, which prompted Trump to sue the newspaper and its parent company, News Corp, for defamation. Trump denied any inappropriate correspondence with the convicted sex trafficker while refusing to release Epstein-related documents. The action marks his second press ban, following his blocking of Associated Press reporters from briefings in March.

• The Trump administration released 230,000 classified files Monday related to Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1968 assassination, fulfilling a campaign promise despite objections from the King family. The documents detail extensive FBI surveillance of the civil rights leader before James Earl Ray shot him at a Memphis hotel. The King family has long maintained that the FBI orchestrated the murder despite Ray's conviction and warned against misusing the surveillance records. The release follows Trump's partial declassification of JFK assassination files earlier this year.

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A former Louisville police officer received a nearly three-year prison sentence for firing blindly into Breonna Taylor's apartment during the 2020 raid that killed her. The case reignited national debates over police accountability and racial justice.

What happened?

On March 13, 2020, Louisville police executed a search warrant at Taylor's apartment, looking for drugs they believed were connected to her ex-boyfriend. Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were awakened by loud banging at their door.

Walker fired at officers after they broke down the door, later saying he thought they were being robbed. He struck one officer in the thigh. Police responded by firing multiple shots into the apartment, five of which killed the 26-year-old Black emergency medical technician.

Brett Hankison

Brett Hankison was positioned outside the apartment during the firefight and fired 10 shots blindly through the exterior wall and a sliding glass door. His bullets penetrated both Taylor's apartment and a neighboring unit where a family with a pregnant woman lived, though no one was struck by his rounds.

Hankison claimed he fired because he believed his fellow officers were under attack by automatic gunfire, though investigators found Walker used a single handgun.

The sentencing

Hankison was convicted of violating Taylor's civil rights during his second federal trial after the first ended with a hung jury. The Justice Department had recommended he receive just one day in prison, arguing the charges were excessive.

"There was no prosecution in there for Breonna," Taylor's mother Tamika Palmer said at the sentencing hearing. "Brett had his defense team — I didn't know he needed another one."

The 33-month sentence represents one of the few successful prosecutions of officers involved in high-profile police killings, though critics argue it's insufficient given Taylor's death.

I’ve got 2 minutes

President Donald Trump is suing News Corp founder Rupert Murdoch for defamation after the Wall Street Journal published an article alleging Trump wrote convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein a birthday card in 2003. Trump's lawyers say the article "maliciously" defamed him by "falsely claiming without substantiation that President Trump is a 'friend,' 'pal,' or 'family' of Epstein." Here's what you need to know.

Who was Jeffrey Epstein?

Jeffrey Epstein was a convicted sex offender who worked as a banker. He socialized with many high-profile celebrities and politicians in the 1990s and early 2000s.

In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to sex trafficking minors and served 13 months in jail. In 2019, he was arrested on new federal sex trafficking charges. He died aged 66 in his jail cell while awaiting trial. His death was ruled a suicide.

Trump and Epstein

In a 2002 New York Magazine interview, Trump said: "I've known Jeff [Epstein] for fifteen years. Terrific guy." He also told the publication Epstein was "a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."

After Epstein's second conviction in 2019, during Trump's first presidency, he told White House reporters he was "not a fan" of Epstein and hadn't been in contact with him for 15 years.

The promised file release

During his 2024 campaign, Trump promised to release files from federal proceedings against Epstein containing flight logs, contact lists, and photographs.

In February 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi said a list of Epstein's clients for sex trafficking was "on [her] desk." At the time, she released a bundle of documents to a group of far-right influencers, primarily consisting of previously released information.

In June, Tesla CEO Elon Musk alleged Trump "is in the Epstein files" and said this was why they had not been released. The U.S. Department of Justice has since said there is no "client list."

Wall St Journal Report

The WSJ published an article last week alleging Trump wrote Epstein a birthday card in 2003. The letter was included in a "birthday book" given to Epstein by convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell.

The journalists allege the letter included "an outline of a naked woman which appear[ed] to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker." The letter reportedly depicts "an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein" and concludes with: "A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret."

The WSJ did not include images or a scanned version of the letter.

Trump’s response

Last week, Trump's legal team announced a lawsuit against Dow Jones (the publisher and owner of the WSJ) and its owner News Corp for publishing "false, defamatory, and malignant statements."

Trump is also suing News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch, CEO Robert Thomson, and the article's authors Khadeeja Safdar and Joseph Palazzolo.

The lawsuit alleges the article was malicious and fraudulent because its authors knew its contents were false. Trump is seeking $10 billion in damages.

What are both sides saying?

Trump posted on Truth Social: "The Wall Street Journal printed a FAKE letter, supposedly to Epstein... I told Rupert Murdoch it was a Scam, that he shouldn't print this Fake Story. But he did, and now I'm going to sue his ass off."

Dow Jones said: "We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit."

One of Epstein's alleged victims, Danielle Bensky, told NBC: "With what's happening now, it feels like we're being erased. All the brave women who came forward… all the work that we did to tell the world what happened to us, it's all being erased."

Trump has ordered the Department of Justice to release transcripts from court proceedings against Epstein and Maxwell. The move will need court approval.

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