Trump administration live updates: Former Victoria's Secret CEO testifies in House panel's Epstein probe

A federal judge today ordered the Trump administration to restore 34 slavery-related panels at the President's House in Philadelphia by Friday at 5 p.m. ET.

U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe on Monday ordered the restoration but without a specific deadline, which she added today. The Trump administration is appealing that earlier ruling.

Rufe's ruling on Monday came after the city of Philadelphia sued over the National Park Service's removal of the panels at the historic site. The judge argued that the federal government does not have the power "to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts.”

President's House is one of the public sites that have been affected by Trump's March executive order to "restore truth and sanity to American history." In it, Trump stated that American monuments or memorials should "focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people."

Sen. John Cornyn is spending the home stretch of his primary warning Texas Republicans that if he loses the contest to state Attorney General Ken Paxton, GOP candidates up and down the ballot in November will pay a steep price.

“If Ken Paxton is the nominee, we could well experience a massacre and the first Democrat elected since 1994 in the state of Texas,” Cornyn told supporters at the Fort Worth Police Association this afternoon, referring to statewide elections.

“I know people assume that Texas is a red state, will always be a red state, but when you nominate a flawed individual with the sort of political baggage that Ken Paxton has, you are risking all that,” Cornyn said. “You’re risking the United States Senate seat. You’re risking President Trump’s agenda to resume two years in office, and you are risking everybody else on the ballot below the Senate race.”

The potential impact on other Republicans on the ballot is a key part of Cornyn’s closing message ahead of his March 3 primary against Paxton and GOP Rep. Wesley Hunt. With three high-profile candidates vying for the Republican Senate nomination, it’s unlikely anyone will win a majority of the vote, meaning the primary is expected to head to a runoff May 26.

Read the full story here.

Cinde Warmington announced her candidacy for governor of New Hampshire today, becoming GOP Gov. Kelly Ayotte's first major Democratic challenger.

Warmington centered her campaign launch on affordability and promised voters in the purple state that she would fight back against Trump.

"I know Kelly Ayotte has a mountain of money and MAGA millionaires behind her, but it's time to take back the governor's office for the people of New Hampshire and make this state more affordable for everyone," Warmington said in a video on X.

She also attacked Ayotte's positions on private school vouchers, Medicaid and prescription costs, and a proposed ICE facility in the state.

Carter Camacho, the 18-year-old Georgia man arrested near the Capitol yesterday with a shotgun, told U.S. Capitol Police officers that he "was just there to talk to a Member of Congress," according to an affidavit filed today.

Camacho faces a charge of unlawful possession of a firearm on Capitol grounds. Appearing in court today, he appeared to be wearing the same camo pants he was arrested in.

The man authorities say is Carter Camacho near the Capitol on Tuesday.  USCP

Camacho, sporting a beard, said he was 18 years old and in his second semester of college. The federal magistrate judge told him he faces a federal felony charge that could result in up to five years in prison. 

Camacho agreed to be represented by a federal public defender. A federal prosecutor said the investigation was “ongoing.”

The man authorities say is Camacho running toward the Capitol.  USCP

Camacho will remain detained at least until a detention hearing March 2.

After a visit to Maryland today, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., urged Democratic state Senate President Bill Ferguson to hold a vote on a new congressional map that could eliminate the state's only Republican-held district.

Ferguson has been reluctant to take up the redistricting proposal the Maryland House passed this month, saying there isn't enough support for it in his chamber, despite pressure from Jeffries, Gov. Wes Moore and other Democrats.

"Bill Ferguson authentically believes that the votes don’t exist in the State Senate to move forward," Jeffries said in a statement. "The only way to find out is to allow an immediate up-or-down vote on the Senate floor with respect to the new congressional map passed by the House of Delegates."

Trump said at a Black History Month event that Dr. Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon who was secretary of housing and urban development in his first administration, will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

"Ben is getting the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It's the biggest, it's the highest award you can have outside of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but it's better because, you know, a lot of people get the Congressional Medal of Honor, they're not around, whereas we don't have to go that far, generally speaking," Trump said.

"So, Ben, I'll be seeing you back here pretty soon," he added.

House Oversight Democrats spoke to reporters this afternoon after a few hours of the committee’s deposition with Les Wexner at his estate in New Albany, Ohio. 

“I do not believe when Mr. Wexner says that he was not having a personal relationship or a friendly relationship with Jeffrey Epstein,” said Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the panel's top Democrat. “I think that is bogus, personally.”

Garcia said there was “no question in my mind that there was a relationship and that Mr. Wexner is very aware, likely aware, of what was going on.”

In a part of his speech discussing his administration's work to lower crime rates in major cities, Trump told attendees: "You need help in Atlanta, you need help in Atlanta. ... We could take care of Atlanta."

"We could take care of Atlanta so fast," Trump added at a Black History Month event at the White House. "We don't just go in and, you know, be tough guys. We move people out. We take career criminals and we get them out. We bring them back to the country from where they came."

He touted his administration's work to lower crime rates in other cities, like Washington, New Orleans and Memphis, Tennessee.

"In every city that we go in, like Washington, you feel much safer now," Trump said.

It’s been 12 days since the president posted an AI-generated image of Barack and Michelle Obama as apes (which was later taken down). At the time, a White House official told NBC News: “A White House staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down.”

But today, when asked about a Truth Social post about the U.K.'s handing over control of the Diego Garcia Islands to Mauritius, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “the post should be taken as the policy of the Trump administration. It’s coming straight from the horse’s mouth. When you see it on Truth Social, you know it’s directly from President Trump."

"That’s the beauty of this president and his transparency," she added.

People at the White House's Black History Month started chanting "Four more years!" during Trump's remarks.

The chant came after Leo Terrell, a senior counsel at the Justice Department, promoted the SAVE America Act to attendees, saying, "American citizens should decide American elections."

At the start of an event commemorating Black History Month, Trump honored the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the civil rights icon, who died this week.

“Jesse was a piece of work, let me tell you, a piece of work but a good man,” he said. 

“He was actually — as you got to know him — better and better over time,” Trump added, saying that other people get "worse and worse" over time.

“He really was special, with lots of personality, grit and street smarts,” Trump said.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed a Democratic counterproposal for an overhaul to Immigration and Customs Enforcement as "unserious" as Trump and Congress work toward an agreement on Department of Homeland Security funding.

"We hope they get serious very soon, because Americans are going to be impacted by this," Leavitt said at a White House briefing this afternoon.

Democrats sent Republican lawmakers and the White House the counteroffer Monday, said a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Funding for DHS ran out last week after Democrats and Republicans were unable to reach agreement on an ICE overhaul. The House and the Senate are in recess this week.

Les Wexner, the billionaire former Victoria’s Secret CEO, told the House Oversight Committee today that he was “conned” by Jeffrey Epstein but denied any wrongdoing, according to a prepared statement a representative for Wexner provided to NBC News.

Wexner, 88, who has been under fire over his many appearances in the Justice Department’s records on Epstein, denied allegations that he was Epstein’s “co-conspirator.” In his prepared statement, he told lawmakers that he “never witnessed nor had any knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activity.” Wexner was testifying in response to a subpoena as part of the committee’s probe into the Epstein case.

“I have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide,” he said in his prepared statement. “I completely and irrevocably cut ties with Epstein nearly twenty years ago when I learned that he was an abuser, a crook, and a liar. And, let me be crystal clear: I never witnessed nor had any knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activity.”

Read the full story here.

A new Colorado group launched an effort today to place an initiative on the ballot this year to pave the way for a new congressional map that would favor Democrats for the 2028 and 2030 elections.

Coloradans for a Level Playing Field, a group that formed earlier this month, is hoping voters will approve a measure to temporarily bypass the state’s independent redistricting commission as a response to Republican-led states redrawing maps over the last year. 

“No one wanted to have to take this action — independent redistricting is the ideal,” the group’s spokesperson, Curtis Hubbard, said in a statement. “We can sit back and do nothing, or we can take action to approve temporary maps that will help keep our elections on a level playing field.”

The group is proposing several measures for the November ballot. The ultimate goal is to enact a redrawn congressional map that would create seven Democratic-leaning districts and one Republican-leaning district for the next two election cycles, and then reimpose an independent redistricting commission after the 2030 Census. The state’s congressional delegation is currently split evenly among the two parties. 

Read the full story here.

A group of Democratic lawmakers from Virginia and Maryland sent a letter to the head of D.C. Water to express "serious concern" over the sewage spill in the Potomac River.

“While we appreciate the ongoing emergency response, we remain deeply concerned about the near-term public health and environmental impacts of this spill,” the group wrote in the letter addressed to David Gadis, the CEO and general manager of the water utility.

Eight lawmakers from the House and Senate signed the letter. They requested that DC Water commit to frequent and transparent communications, the delivery of public briefings and development of a "comprehensive environmental impact assessment and remediation plan." They also asked that DC Water continue to monitor water quality over the spring and summer and to keep members of Congress up to date.

Almost a quarter of a billion gallons of untreated sewage spilled into the river before the leak was stopped in late January, the lawmakers said, citing figures from the water utility. They noted that water samples at the spill site have shown E. coli bacteria levels 10,000 times above Environmental Protection Agency recreational water quality standards, as well as elevated levels of the bacteria downstream.

At least a dozen Democratic members of Congress plan to boycott Trump’s State of the Union address at the Capitol next Tuesday and are scheduled to attend a rally on the National Mall instead.

Progressive groups MoveOn and MeidasTouch announced today that they’re hosting the “People’s State of the Union” rally at 8:30 p.m. ET near the Capitol. The event is billed as “counterprogramming” to “President Trump’s night full of lies and misplaced priorities for the American people.” The groups said, “Democratic lawmakers will be joined on stage by the everyday Americans most impacted by Trump’s dangerous agenda.”

“Next week, Trump will deliver his State of the Union address. I won’t be there,” Van Hollen wrote in a post on X Wednesday. “Trump is marching America towards fascism, and I refuse to normalize his shredding of our Constitution & democracy. This cannot be business as usual.”

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Russia and Ukraine don’t agree on much, but both sides left the latest round of U.S.-led peace talks today describing the negotiations as “difficult.”

Moscow — and increasingly Trump — have blamed Ukraine for the absence of a deal, while Kyiv argues it is instead the Kremlin that is stalling.

The future of territory in Ukraine’s east is a key sticking point as the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion approaches next week, with Vladimir Putin’s hard-line demands fueling doubts over whether he actually wants to strike a deal.

To many in Ukraine and outside observers of the war, the lack of progress should be no surprise given the man Putin sent to Geneva this week as his chief negotiator.

The Russian delegation at the first two rounds of recent trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi was led by the country’s chief of military intelligence, Adm. Igor Kostyukov. But Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky led Moscow’s team in the Swiss city this week.

Read the full story here.

Stephen Colbert took on his own network again last night, pushing back against CBS’ statement regarding his unaired interview with a Democratic candidate for Senate.

Holding up the company’s statement on a piece of paper, Colbert joked: “Now this is a surprisingly small piece of paper, considering how many butts it’s trying to cover.”

The statement came after Colbert claimed Monday that CBS had pushed him not to air an interview he had done with Texas state Rep. James Talarico, who is running for U.S. Senate. Colbert, who is parting ways with CBS in May, said the company had been worried about possible legal action from the Trump administration.

Read the full story here.

WASHINGTON — A coalition of health and environmental groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency today, challenging its determination last week that revoked a scientific finding that has been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.

The rule finalized by the EPA last week rescinds a 2009 government declaration known as the endangerment finding that determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare. The Obama-era finding is the legal underpinning of nearly all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources that are heating the planet.

The repeal eliminates all greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks, and could unleash a broader undoing of climate regulations on stationary sources such as power plants and oil and gas facilities, experts say.

Read the full story here.

The Vatican will not participate in Trump’s “Board of Peace“ initiative, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s top diplomatic official, said yesterday while adding that efforts to handle crisis situations should be managed by the United Nations.

Pope Leo, the first U.S. pope and a critic of some of Trump’s policies, was invited to join the board in January.

Under Trump’s Gaza plan that led to a fragile ceasefire in October, the board was meant to supervise Gaza’s temporary governance. Trump thereafter said the board, with him as chair, would be expanded to tackle global conflicts. The board will hold its first meeting in Washington on Thursday to discuss Gaza’s reconstruction.

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An 18-year-old man was arrested yesterday after he rushed toward the U.S. Capitol wearing tactical gear and carrying a loaded weapon. Police say the teenager, Carter Camacho, backed down when confronted by Capitol police, but they found more ammunition, a Kevlar helmet and a gas mask in his car. NBC’s Ryan Nobles reports for "Today."

Man Arrested After Rushing the US Capitol With Loaded Shotgun

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Radio Free Asia has resumed broadcasts to people in China, its CEO said, after Trump administration cuts last year largely forced the U.S.-funded outlet to cease operations.

Radio Free Asia and its sister outlets, including Voice of America, for years had been financed with funding approved by Congress and overseen by the U.S. Agency for Global Media. Last year their grants were terminated over allegations of wasting taxpayer money and anti-Trump bias, a move critics decried as ceding ground to China and other U.S. adversaries.

“We are proud to have resumed broadcasting to audiences in China in Mandarin, Tibetan, and Uyghur, providing some of the world’s only independent reporting on these regions in the local languages,” the news organization's president and CEO Bay Fang wrote yesterday in a post on LinkedIn.

Fang said the ability to restart the broadcasts was “due to private contracting with transmission services,” without providing details.

Read the full story here.

The Trump administration said Japan was moving forward with its first three projects as part of $550 billion it pledged to invest in the United States in exchange for lower tariffs.

In a statement late last night, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced a 9.2-gigawatt natural gas power facility in Ohio that he said would be one of the largest of its kind of the world, as well as a crude oil export facility along the U.S. Gulf Coast and a synthetic diamond grit facility in Georgia. He said the projects, which together are worth almost $36 billion, would create thousands of American jobs.

Under a trade agreement the two countries reached in July, Japan pledged to invest $550 billion in the U.S. in exchange for a U.S. tariff rate of 15%, lower than Trump had earlier threatened.

“The scale of these projects are so large, and could not be done without one very special word, TARIFFS,” Trump said in a social media post.

House Oversight Committee lawmakers will depose billionaire Les Wexner in Ohio today as part of their investigation into the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The deposition comes after the Justice Department unredacted part of a 2019 FBI document that included a reference to Wexner as a co-conspirator. An FBI email from the same year also said there was “limited evidence regarding his involvement.”

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has said that Wexner's name appears in the Epstein files thousands of times.

A legal representative for Wexner said his team was told in 2019 that he wasn't a co-conspirator or a target of the investigation. Wexner fully cooperated with the government, the representative said.

Wexner, who had a financial relationship with Epstein that dated to the 1980s, has said he cut ties after Epstein was accused of sexually abusing minors in Florida. Wexner said that he later discovered Epstein "had misappropriated vast sums of money from me and my family.”

The House Oversight Committee voted in January to subpoena Wexner.

A senior U.S. official yesterday revealed what he said were new details of an underground nuclear test blast that China allegedly conducted in June 2020.

Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Yeaw told an event at the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington that a remote seismic station in Kazakhstan measured an “explosion” of magnitude-2.75 located 450 miles away at the Lop Nor test grounds in western China on June 22, 2020.

“I’ve looked at additional data since then. There is very little possibility I would say that it is anything but an explosion, a singular explosion,” said Yeaw, adding that the data were not consistent with mining blasts.

A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington said the allegation about China conducting a nuclear test was “entirely unfounded” and an attempt “to fabricate excuses for resuming” U.S. nuclear testing.

Read the full story here.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is expected today to call for a two-year suspension of tax incentives offered to develop data centers amid growing scrutiny over their rapid expansion and impact on communities. 

Pritzker plans to advocate for a policy shift in his State of the State and budget address in Springfield under a proposal first shared with NBC News. 

At the center of the plan is a two-year pause, effective July 1, on Illinois’ data center tax credit program. Pritzker will instruct key state agencies to study the impact of existing data centers on the state’s energy grid and consumers and analyze the financial impact the centers have had on the economy. Specifically, the governor’s office said it is trying to make sure the centers are financially sustainable over time, protect consumers from soaring energy costs and ensure fair allocation of resources. 

Read the full story here.

The United States and Iran have reached an understanding on the “guiding principles” in nuclear talks, Tehran’s foreign minister said yesterday, though he cautioned that work still needs to be done to reach an agreement and head off the threat of an American military attack.

“I believe we made good progress,” said Abbas Araghchi, the head of the Iranian delegation in Geneva. “The path toward an agreement has started but we will not reach it quickly,” he told state media after hours of indirect talks, adding that the two sides would separately work on draft texts before a new round of negotiations.

Vice President JD Vance gave a mixed review of the talks today in an interview with Fox News.

“In some ways, it went well. They agreed to meet afterwards,” Vance said. “But in other ways, it was very clear that the president has set some red lines that the Iranians are not yet willing to actually acknowledge and work through. So we’re going to keep on working it.”

Read the full story here.