Analysis: Donald Trump’s top 25 lies of 2025 – CNN Politics

Politics,13 min read

Analysis: Donald Trump’s top 25 lies of 2025

By Daniel Dale, Dec 27, 2025

It was hard to pick only 25. But it was easier than it used to be.

Just like his first presidency, President Donald Trump’s first calendar year back in the White House was an unceasing parade of lies. In 2025, though, the variety of Trump’s false claims shrunk even as he maintained his trademark staggering frequency.

Trump’s lying has always been characterized by dogged repetition. It became especially repetitive in 2025. While he continued to regularly sprinkle in new lies, he relied on a core set of go-to fabrications he deployed virtually no matter the setting and no matter how many times they had been debunked.

Did you hear the one about how Trump secured $17 trillion or $18 trillion in investment? You probably did if you watched even a few Trump speeches or interviews. Same with the one about how consumer prices have fallen this year, the one about how Trump ended seven or eight wars, and the one about how foreign leaders around the world emptied their prisons and mental institutions to send unwanted citizens across the US border as migrants.

Here is our highly subjective list of Trump’s top 25 lies of 2025. We chose some because the president repeated them particularly often, some because they were about notably consequential topics, and some because they were especially egregious in their distance from reality.

Inflation, tariffs and the economy

Lie: Trump secured $17 trillion or $18 trillion in investment in 2025

The president who loves big numbers, even if they’re fake, had a fictional figure he cited in speech after speech: a claim that he had secured “$17 trillion” in investment in the US in less than a year back in the White House. It didn’t help Trump’s case that the White House’s own website said at the time that it was actually $8.8 trillion – and even that figure was wildly inflated – but he proceeded to increase his claim to “$18 trillion” even though the website still had it under $10 trillion.

Lie: ‘Every price is down’

Trump lied even about subjects that everyday people could themselves see he was lying about. He claimed in the fall that there was “no inflation,” though there was inflation; that “every price is down,” though prices were up on thousands of products; that grocery prices were “way down,” though they were up; and that beef was the only grocery item that had gotten more expensive, though there were dozens of others. Polls showed most Americans weren’t buying his assertions.

Lie: Trump was reducing prescription drug prices by ‘2,000%, 3,000%’

Trump deployed not only implausible figures but impossible figures. He declared on numerous occasions that his “most favored nation” policy was going to bring down the price of prescription drugs by “500%” or more, sometimes “1,400 to 1,500%” or even “2,000%, 3,000%.” These claims are debunked by math itself – a decline of more than 100% would mean that Americans would get paid to acquire their medications – but the president kept making them even though he could have simply touted real (less-than-100%) price reductions on some drugs.

Lie: Foreign countries pay the US government’s tariffs

As consumer prices continued to rise, in part because of Trump’s sweeping tariffs on imported products, Trump clung to his familiar lie that these tariffs are paid by foreign countries, not by people or companies in the US. (The tariff payments to the government are made by US importers, not foreign exporters, and importers often pass on some or all of the added costs to the final consumer.) The president essentially fact-checked himself in November, when he told an interviewer that he would lower Americans’ coffee prices by lowering his tariffs on imported coffee.

Public safety

Lie: Portland was ‘burning down’

The president repeatedly said an American city was “burning down” or “burning to the ground” even though it was absolutely not burning down or burning to the ground. Sporadic clashes between protesters and law enforcement outside one Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland did not mean a 145-square-mile city was ablaze – as Portland residents, officials and media outlets kept noting as he kept lying.

Lie: Washington, DC had no murders for six months

The president continued his long-established pattern of choosing dramatic untruths over facts that would have been useful to him if he had just stated them accurately. Instead of correctly noting that crime in Washington, DC, declined after his federal takeover of law enforcement there in August, he falsely claimed three times in a November speech that the capital hadn’t had a single murder “in six months.” Washington actually had more than 50 homicides over the six months prior to the speech, police statistics and Washington Post tracking show.

Lie: ‘I invaded Los Angeles and we opened up the water’

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Analysis: Donald Trump’s top 25 lies of 2025 | CNN Politics

Trump sued over East Wing demolition | CNN Politics

Politics 3 min read

Trump sued over East Wing demolition

By Kevin Liptak

Updated 10 hr ago

An excavator works to clear rubble after the demolition of the East Wing of the White House, on October 23.Eric Lee/Getty Images

The nation’s top historic preservation group is suing the Trump administration to block construction of President Donald Trump’s plans for a massive new White House ballroom until review boards weigh in on the project.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a congressionally chartered non-profit tasked with preserving historic buildings, said it was bringing the suit because its previous letter urging a pause on the project had gone unheeded.

The group, which alleges the construction project is “unlawful,” is asking the US District Court for the District of Columbia to halt further activity until the administration complies with review processes, including a public comment period.

“The White House is arguably the most evocative building in our country and a globally recognized symbol of our powerful American ideals. As the organization charged with protecting places where our history happened, the National Trust was compelled to file this case,” said Carol Quillen, the group’s president and CEO.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Trump sued over East Wing demolition | CNN Politics

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Roberts and Kagan prepare for another showdown on executive power – CNN Politics

Politics 9 min read

Roberts and Kagan prepare for another showdown on executive power

By Joan Biskupic, CNN Chief Supreme Court Analyst, Dec 5, 2025 See all topics

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan are well matched, rhetorically forceful opposites. And they have been clashing for more than a decade over an increasingly relevant question of presidential power: How easy should it be for the president to fire the heads of independent agencies?

That issue, to be aired at the Supreme Court on Monday, has grown more salient as President Donald Trump has attempted to remove multiple officials, including at the Federal Trade Commission, National Labor Relations Board and Federal Reserve.

Their first faceoff occurred in 2009 before Kagan had even joined the court, as she was serving as US solicitor general, standing in the well of the courtroom, with Roberts looking down from the center chair. They tangled over a 1935 precedent that protects agency independence and that now hangs in the balance, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States.

Since his days as a young lawyer in the Ronald Reagan administration, Roberts has argued for vast executive power, including the authority to fire individuals who lead administrative agencies. “Without such power,” Roberts wrote in the 2009 dispute over a corporate auditing board, “the President could not be held fully accountable for discharging his own responsibilities; the buck would stop somewhere else.”

Kagan, in contrast, believes the constitutional separation of powers allows Congress to establish and safeguard certain areas of administrative independence. And she has relied on Supreme Court rulings, including the 1935 milestone, that have allowed Congress to prevent the president from removing independent administrators without sufficient grounds.

Monday’s case was brought by former Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, who received a March 18 email from Trump saying her “continued service on the FTC is inconsistent with my Administration’s priorities.” (Under the law governing the FTC, commissioners can be removed only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”)

The court’s ruling will extend far beyond Slaughter and the FTC and have vast consequences for specialized regulation in an array of financial, environmental and public safety spheres.

In an early phase of Slaughter’s lawsuit, in September, the Roberts majority reversed a lower court order that would have allowed Slaughter to stay in her post. The move was consistent with Roberts’ opinions that have steadily eroded the reach of Humphrey’s Executor v. United States and signaled he considers it a dead letter.

Related article Supreme Court flicks at First Amendment concerns with state’s subpoena of faith-based pregnancy centers

“The majority may be raring to take that action,” Kagan observed as she dissented from that September action. “But until the deed is done, Humphrey’s controls, and prevents the majority from giving the President the unlimited removal power Congress denied him.”

More broadly, the eventual ruling could build on other decisions providing Trump more power as he carries out his second term agenda. Last year, Roberts and his fellow conservatives granted Trump substantial immunity from prosecution as it expanded the concept of a president’s “conclusive and preclusive” authority. Then, earlier this year, the court freed the administration from lower-court nationwide orders against his various policy initiatives.

These decisions have dissolved constraints on the president, and if the court were to reverse the 1935 case, the president would be further unburdened by congressional legislation barring him from removing agency officials without sufficient grounds.

Vanderbilt University political science professor John Dearborn, who has studied the Reagan era development of a “unitary executive theory” and Roberts’ writings, told CNN, “He’s had these kinds of ideas for a long time, that the only way that agencies are accountable is if the president has the power to fire people.”

‘I didn’t say anything bad about Humphrey’s Executor’

Before joining the bench, Roberts and Kagan were first-rate oral advocates with their own, respective, steady and tenacious styles. Roberts served as a deputy US solicitor general during the George H.W. Bush administrations and then appeared frequently at the court in private practice. He argued a total 39 cases before the high court.

Kagan, who hadn’t previously argued a case at the high court, was named US solicitor general in 2009 by President Barack Obama. She went on to argue six cases, including the presidential-removal controversy, before Obama nominated her to the bench in 2010 to succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Roberts and Kagan prepare for another showdown on executive power | CNN Politics

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The political danger of the Epstein files for Trump – CNN Politics

The political danger of the Epstein files for Trump

Politics• 4 min read

Analysis by Aaron Blake, 10 hr ago

If President Donald Trump has nothing to hide vis-à-vis Jeffrey Epstein, he sure has a weird way of showing it.

Trump hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with the convicted sex offender, but he’s doing a great job of looking suspicious.

And that could be a political problem in and of itself – regardless of whatever ultimately comes from the Epstein files.

A batch of newly released Epstein emails on Wednesday added details about Trump’s past relationship with Epstein but no smoking guns. (The White House said the emails “prove absolutely nothing.”)

In one of those emails from 2011, Epstein expressed surprise to accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell that Trump’s name hadn’t surfaced amid accusations involving Epstein. Epstein added that Trump had at one point spent hours with Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre at Epstein’s house.

Related article Takeaways from the new Epstein emails mentioning Trump

And in 2019, Epstein appeared to signal Trump was quite aware of Maxwell recruiting girls from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in the early 2000s, saying “of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop.”

While some have claimed these emails show Trump had knowledge of or even involvement in Epstein’s crimes, it’s not nearly so evident. Giuffre, who died by suicide in April, has acknowledged meeting Trump and never accused him of wrongdoing. And Trump has acknowledged being aware of Maxwell recruiting employees including Giuffre from Mar-a-Lago. (The big question there is whether Trump had any inkling about what Maxwell was recruiting a minor female like Giuffre for.)

But also notable on Wednesday was Trump’s reaction.

As all this was going down, he and his White House seemed preoccupied with what appeared to an 11th-hour campaign to thwart a House discharge petition that would force a vote on releasing the full Epstein files.

With the petition due to get a decisive 218th signature when a new Democratic member of Congress was sworn in later that day, the White House held a meeting in the Situation Room with a key GOP lawmaker who’d signed on, while another said she was playing phone tag with the president. Both GOP congresswomen later told CNN Trump hadn’t personally lobbied them to remove their names. But the president also publicly pressured Republicans who sided with Democrats on forcing Epstein disclosures.

It was a weird move, to be sure. No Republicans removed their names from the petition, and Speaker Mike Johnson quickly said he would schedule a vote for next week on compelling the Justice Department to release the full files.

Related article Trump is getting pulled deeper and deeper into the Epstein drama

Even if the measure passes in the House, that’s not the end of the story. The GOP-led Senate would still have to take it up, and Trump would still have to sign it. So it’s not like this will cause the imminent release of the documents.

But Trump’s resistance to something his base has long clamored for – and the optics of the Situation Room meeting in particular – would only seem to deepen the huge suspicions that a large number of Americans already harbor about the government covering up Epstein-related matters.

And that gets at the big point here – and the political danger for Trump.

This is merely the latest baffling episode in the administration’s handling of the Epstein files. Among the others:

• The administration’s suspiciously timed, sudden reversal on releasing the files.
• Trump’s belated disclosure of his knowledge of Maxwell’s Mar-a-Lago recruitment.
• Trump’s weird denial of authoring a lewd letter for Epstein’s 50th birthday album.
• His other false claims about Epstein-related matters.
• The administration’s dubious decision to grant an interview with Maxwell, which seemed geared more toward helping Trump than anything else. (Sure enough, the newly released emails undercut Maxwell’s claims about Trump in that interview.)
• The transfer of Maxwell to a minimum-security prison camp that she didn’t appear eligible for without a waiver. The administration still hasn’t explained how this happened, months later. And CNN’s MJ Lee reported Thursday that Maxwell is getting special treatment there.

Even if Trump doesn’t have anything to hide, the danger here is in making it look a whole lot like he does.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: The political danger of the Epstein files for Trump | CNN Politics

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Trump’s free speech backflip was 250 years in the making | CNN Politics

Politics• 8 min read

Trump’s free speech backflip was 250 years in the making

Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf, 6 hr ago

A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.

“If we don’t have FREE SPEECH, then we just don’t have a FREE COUNTRY,” then-candidate Donald Trump said in a campaign video.

But less than nine months into his second term, he was explaining his administration’s stance this this way:

“We took the freedom of speech away,” he said at a White House event Wednesday as he tried to explain his call to put people who burn the American flag behind bars for years despite a very clear Supreme Court decision that lists flag burning as free speech.

Trump’s complete turnabout on speech is indicative of the contradictions and ironies in the bedrock principle of the American liberties in the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment.

While Trump came to office promising to restore free speech, particularly on college campuses and on social media, he’s now engaged in a multi-front war over what people can say in the US:

► A Ronald Reagan-appointed judge accused Trump’s administration of a “full-throated assault on the First Amendment” for targeting and deporting pro-Palestinian academics.

► Conservative Supreme Court justices were skeptical at oral arguments over a Colorado law that bans debunked LGBT conversion therapy, suggesting it may step on the free speech rights of therapists.

► Trump wants colleges and universities to clamp down on campus speech in exchange for federal funding.

► He applauded his FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, for trying to get Jimmy Kimmel’s show canceled by ABC, an effort that backfired.

► His lawsuits against media companies and law firms, none of which appear to stand on firm legal ground, have nonetheless been wildly successful in extracting settlement payments and sending a message to firms that would oppose him.

► Companies like YouTube have reinstated accounts or made plans to do so for members of his administration, such as FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, who were suspended for spreading misinformation during the pandemic.

► His attorney general, Pam Bondi, promised to go after “hate speech” by people who she perceived as celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk.

The hate speech element is particularly concerning to experts because in recent decades, it has become a tenet of Supreme Court cases and free speech advocates that “hate speech” is such a nebulous term that leaving it unprotected would invite exactly the type of selective viewpoint-policing that the administration now stands accused of.

The hate speech in question was not any obviously repugnant White supremacist or racist ideology, but rather comments related to Kirk’s death, potentially including those who celebrated it. But we don’t really know since Bondi has not been specific.

Congress undercut the First Amendment almost immediately

US history is full of pendulum swings back and forth between freedom and restriction of speech.

The First Amendment, adopted shortly after the Constitution, guarantees Congress shall make no law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

But within a few years, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to criticize the president, then John Adams, during the undeclared Quasi War between the US and France.

“The sad truth is, free speech has always been a weaponized slogan, right from the outset, when it’s first invented in the early 18th century,” according to Fara Dabhoiwala, a historian at Princeton University and author of the recent book “What is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea.”

Benjamin Franklin’s grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache was among those arrested for “libeling” Adams under the law. Federalists also threw a Vermont publisher and congressman, Matthew Lyon, in jail for criticizing Adams in print.

(Among other things, Lyon wrote that Adams had “an unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp,” and, separately, started a fight on the House floor over Adams’ foreign policy. Lyon, attacked with a cane after he spat tobacco juice at a fellow lawmaker, defended himself with fire tongs.)

Far from silencing Lyon, however, the Sedition Act backfired. Lyon ran a successful campaign for Congress from jail. The unpopularity of the clampdown on speech helped lead to Adams’ defeat in the election of 1800.

Running for president from prison

Another wartime restriction on speech, the Sedition Act of 1918, led to the conviction and sentencing to 10 years in prison of the socialist Eugene Debs for his criticism of the draft during World War I.

The Supreme Court upheld his conviction, but Debs ran a presidential campaign from his jail cell in 1920 and got nearly 1 million votes. President Warren G. Harding later commuted Debs’ sentence.

Marketplace of ideas

Courts and people have complex and nuanced views on free speech. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the unanimous majority opinion upholding Debs’ conviction, but he also wrote a key dissent in a case involving the conviction of Russian immigrants who distributed leaflets calling for a general strike in the US to interrupt the war effort.

In that 1919 dissent, he espoused what would become a more absolutist view of the benefits of free speech. “The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market,” he wrote.

Students greet Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the St. James Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, after a federal judge enjoined the city school board from expelling them for participating in civil rights demonstrations.Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Free speech and civil rights

In the US, the evolution of speech has also turned on issues of race.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Trump’s free speech backflip was 250 years in the making | CNN Politics

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October 7, 2025: Attorney General Pam Bondi spars with the Senate Judiciary Committee | CNN Politics

October 7, 2025: Attorney General Pam Bondi spars with the Senate Judiciary Committee

By Hannah Rabinowitz, Holmes Lybrand, Jeremy Herb and Casey Gannon, CNN

Updated 2:37 PM EDT, Tue October 7, 2025

What we covered here

• Attorney General Pam Bondi testified for a contentious 4 and a half hours before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

• Bondi continuously deflected questions from Democrats on controversial issues, including the Jeffery Epstein files, prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey and legal rationale for using the national guard in US cities.

• The hearing comes one day before Comey is set to be arraigned in federal court. His recent indictment by a federal grand jury was an extraordinary escalation in President Donald Trump’s effort to prosecute his political enemies.

20 Posts 5 hr 9 min ago

Our live coverage of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing has ended for the day. Click here to read the takeaways. 5 hr 9 min ago

Takeaways from Bondi’s 4 and a half hour Senate hearing

From CNN’s Jeremy Herb, Hannah Rabinowitz and Holmes Lybrand

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee today.Alex Wong/Getty Images

Democrats and Republicans repeatedly talked past one another throughout the hearing with Attorney General Pam Bondi, pointing fingers across the aisle over who was to blame for weaponizing the Justice Department.

Here are the key takeaways:

• Deflect and attack: Bondi fended off questions on the investigation into accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, National Guard deployments, and investigations into Trump’s political enemies, using quick-one liners to deflect and personal attacks to push back against Democrats.

• Democrats press Bondi on Trump’s influence: Democrats pointed to numerous examples they say show Bondi has failed to keep the Justice Department independent from the whims and wishes of the president.

• Republicans jump on news FBI reviewed senators’ phone records: Several Republican senators pointed to the release of documents the night before Tuesday’s hearing that showed the phone records of eight Republican senators and a House lawmaker were obtained as part of the special counsel’s investigation into Trump and 2020 election interference.

• Bondi and GOP defend going after Comey: Bondi and a former Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee defended the indictment of Comey during Tuesday’s hearing, one day before he’s set to be arraigned on charges that he allegedly lied to Congress in 2020 testimony. Bondi said several times that the Alexandria, Virginia, grand jury that handed up the indictment was a “liberal” one.

Read more.

Editor’s Note: There are a number of blog posts here, and online about Jack Smith. His report is covered. Use this to see the coverage.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: October 7, 2025: Attorney General Pam Bondi spars with the Senate Judiciary Committee | CNN Politics

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Why Trump’s troop deployments to US cities are such a big deal | CNN Politics

Politics• 7 min read

Why Trump’s troop deployments to US cities are such a big deal

Analysis by Stephen Collinson, 1 hr 25 min ago

In a nation founded on a revolt against tyranny, the notion of American troops being sent onto domestic streets has always evoked a specter of liberty in peril.

This is why most presidents resisted such a step and why President Donald Trump’s insatiable zeal for doing so may be so consequential.

His attempts to send National Guard reservists into Portland, Oregon, and Chicago, Illinois, against the wishes of city and state authorities, has the potential to finally create the constitutional crisis his critics have feared for eight months.

It is testing how far Trump can push his Make America Great Again philosophy and his strongman “I alone can fix it” mantra. Originally unveiled at his first GOP convention in 2016, it runs like a spine through his two presidencies.

The transfer of reserve troops from red states such as Texas to Democratic cities will also deepen the chasm and the hostility between conservative rural and liberal urban areas that is an increasingly potent dynamic in America’s divided politics.

Ultimately, a cascade of administration threats and power moves by the White House; fierce pushback from Democratic mayors; and a thicket of legal challenges will show how far the law and the Constitution can contain a president who epitomizes many of the anxieties of the founders about how a politicized executive with a lust for power could threaten their republic.

As so often with the great controversies of the Trump era, the facts are obscured in misinformation, false claims, cumbersome legal arguments and the ambitions of big political players on each side.

But the core issue is quite simple.

• In the latest round of its crime and immigration crackdown, the administration chose two Democratic cities, Chicago and Portland, to which it wants to send troops even though the legal and constitutional conditions that might permit the use of the military in law enforcement are far from met.
• In the latest developments, Trump on Monday formally authorized the deployment of at least 300 members of the Illinois National Guard to Chicago for 60 days.
• Hundreds more reservists are headed from Texas to Chicago after being placed under federal control. City and state authorities sued the administration to stop the deployment.
• A Trump-appointed judge, meanwhile, has temporarily blocked his bid to take control of reservists in Oregon or to ship reservists to Portland from California.
• Court action is frustrating the president. He warned Monday he’d invoke the rarely used Insurrection Act to bypass judges thwarting his ambitions if needed. “If I had to do that, I would do that,” he said from the Oval Office.

What’s behind Trump’s ‘war zone’ rhetoric?

Trump has claimed for months that Portland is “on fire” and that it, Chicago and other American cities are lawless danger zones on a par with Afghanistan.

Just because that’s hyperbole doesn’t mean there aren’t problems.

The record of Democratic mayors and governors is questionable in some cities that have been plagued by crime and homelessness. While crime data might be falling, not all citizens feel safe. Many would prefer more law enforcement. And the Biden administration’s failure to secure the southern border led many voters last year to feel the situation was out of control. The oversight was more surprising since it was obvious that Trump would run on a hardline message on his top issue in the 2024 election.

Rep. Pat Harrigan, a North Carolina Republican and former Green Beret, told Audie Cornish on “CNN This Morning” that claims Trump was overreaching were “overblown.” He said, “Authorities under which these troops are being deployed are limited to protecting ICE facilities and other federal facilities within these cities.”

But Trump’s summoning an inaccurate picture of cities that are “like a war zone.” Officials seem to compete with one another in conjuring new nightmares of urban dystopia based on conservative media doom loops.

Top White House adviser Stephen Miller on Monday used extremely evocative language when arguing that local law enforcement officials are failing to protect federal immigration agents and therefore need military help. He told CNN’s Boris Sanchez that “in Portland, ICE officers have been subjected to over 100 nights of terrorist assault, doxxing, murder threats, violent attack, and every other means imaginable to try to overturn the results of the last election through violence.”

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Why Trump’s troop deployments to US cities are such a big deal | CNN Politics

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Donald Trump vs. Antonin Scalia on burning the American flag | CNN Politics

Politics• 5 min read

Donald Trump vs. Antonin Scalia on burning the American flag

Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf, Aug 25, 2025

President Donald Trump sees an epidemic of flag burning and says it needs attention.

“All over the country they’re burning flags,” Trump said Monday in the Oval Office, declaring it an important issue. He signed an executive order directing his Justice Department to investigate incidents of flag burning where laws are broken.

There are a few problems with his claim, the first of which is that it’s not at all clear they’re burning flags all over the country.

There are incidents of flag burning at protests, surely, such as when pro-Palestinian protesters burned an American flag alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress last year.

That burning drew bipartisan opposition. Then-Vice President Kamala Harris condemned the act and said the flag “should never be desecrated in that way.”

‘Sad’ Supreme Court protected flag burning as speech

But beyond the question of whether flags are indeed being burned all over the country is the fact that the Supreme Court, back in 1989, declared flag burning to be a protected form of speech under the First Amendment.

Trump acknowledged that decision by a “sad” Supreme Court, and his executive order is seemingly written to address the Supreme Court’s flag burning decisions.

The administration will try to prosecute other crimes, like violent crimes, hate crimes and crimes “against property and the peace,” as a way to deter flag burning, according to a White House fact sheet.

Trump spoke to that Supreme Court decision when he said the simple act of burning the flag is an incitement.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Donald Trump vs. Antonin Scalia on burning the American flag | CNN Politics

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Live updates: Justice Department releases transcripts from Ghislaine Maxwell’s interview | CNN Politics

Live Updates

Justice Department releases transcripts from Ghislaine Maxwell’s interview

By Hannah Rabinowitz, Kara Scannell, Katelyn Polantz, Veronica Stracqualursi, Clare Foran, Dan Berman, Aditi Sangal, Elise Hammond, Kaanita Iyer and Marshall Cohen, CNN

Updated 5:26 PM EDT, Fri August 22, 2025

Below is a related video from Forbes:

https://youtu.be/R9m0oUD3z2E

Trump claims he didn’t know or approve Ghislaine Maxwell’s prison transfer 01:12 (see on original article)…

What we’re covering here

• Maxwell transcript: The Justice Department has released a transcript of the interview that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche conducted with Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. You can read the full transcript here.

• Terms of the interview: The Justice Department gave Maxwell limited immunity so that she could discuss her criminal case but did not promise any other benefits in exchange for her testimony, according to the transcript.

• Trump and Epstein: In the transcript, Maxwell said she never witnessed anything untoward in Donald Trump’s friendship with Epstein and never heard of any allegations that he acted inappropriately. Shortly before the release, Trump told reporters that he supported transparency in the case.

• Records transfer: Meanwhile, the House Oversight Committee has received the first batch of records related to Epstein from the Justice Department, and it contains “thousands of pages of documents,” a spokesperson said this afternoon.

30 Posts 33 min ago

Read the full transcript of Blanche’s interview with Ghislaine Maxwell

Scroll below to read the full transcript of the interview that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche conducted with Ghislaine Maxwell.

Here’s the latest round of top lines from Ghislaine Maxwell’s interview with the Justice Department

From CNN’s Aditi Sangal, Casey Gannon, Katelyn Polantz, Kara Scannell, Marshall Cohen, Sarah Ferris, Kristen Holmes and Alayna Treene

This undated trial evidence image obtained December 8, 2021, from the US District Court for the Southern District of New York shows Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein.US District Court for the Southern District of New York

We are recapping the key findings from the released 337-page transcript of the interview that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche conducted with Ghislaine Maxwell last month.

Here’s the latest batch of updates:

No client list: Maxwell said there is no Epstein client list, and gave an explanation, which seemed to confuse Blanche.

Birthday book: She referred to her notes as she tried to recount different financial clients that Epstein kept. When Blanche asked about the notes, Maxwell’s attorney responded, “not the birthday book,” appearing to crack a joke about a reported collection of letters Maxwell had compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday that included one bearing Donald Trump’s name. Trump has repeatedly denied writing the letter and sued The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the letter, for defamation.

Bizarre exchange: Maxwell acknowledged that Epstein preferred younger women, of legal age, but said he liked them not because of anything sexual but because they were “invigorating” and “up to date on music” and brought new “ideas” to the table.

Bill Clinton: Maxwell said to her knowledge that the former president never received a massage while in her presence and never went to Epstein’s private island.

Admiring Trump: Maxwell complimented Trump for “his extraordinary achievement” of becoming president. She said she only visited Mar-a-Lago once or twice, for an event, alone. Epstein, who she described to be in closer touch with Trump than her, visited separately.

Meanwhile, in the present-day Trump world: The president’s team discussed releasing the audio and transcripts for several weeks, officials familiar with the matter told CNN. Many in the administration argued against resurfacing the Epstein story, but others insisted that releasing the material would help them better control the narrative.

Read more: Live updates: Justice Department releases transcripts from Ghislaine Maxwell’s interview | CNN Politics

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Live updates: Justice Department releases transcripts from Ghislaine Maxwell’s interview | CNN Politics

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