Live updates: Trump criticizes Israel over military strike in Qatar targeting Hamas leaders

The Senate committee that oversees the Centers for disease Control and Prevention will hold a hearing next week with testimony from former CdC director Susan Monarez, whom the Trump administration abruptly fired last month after she refused to resign under pressure.

The hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, chaired by Bill Cassidy, R-La., will take place Sept. 17 and focus on oversight of the CdC. Chief Medical Officer debra Houry, who resigned after Monarez’s dismissal by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is also expected to testify, according to a committee spokesperson.

“To protect children’s health, Americans need to know what has happened and is happening at the CdC,” Cassidy said in a statement tonight announcing the hearing. “They need to be reassured that their child’s health is given priority. Radical transparency is the only way to do that.”

The hearing will come one day before the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is scheduled to convene, on Sept. 18.

Read the full story here.

When House democrats gathered behind closed doors today to discuss strategy to avert a government shutdown, they agreed on one thing: They must use the leverage of the Sept. 30 deadline to advance their priorities.

But the party has yet to agree on what those priorities should be.

In the House meeting, lawmakers voiced anxieties about the nearing deadline, proposing a wide variety of ideas, multiple sources with knowledge of the discussion said. And they questioned whether their Senate counterparts would have the stomach for a fight after Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and other key democratic senators supported a Republican-only spending bill during the last shutdown deadline in March.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, d-N.Y., encouraged lawmakers to focus on a viable endgame.

Read the full story here.

Moments after Trump entered a d.C. restaurant for dinner tonight, a small group of protesters was escorted out of the building.

The protesters, carrying Palestinian flags, chanted: “Free d.C., free Palestine, Trump is the Hitler of our time.”

Trump, who rarely eats at d.C. restaurants, praised his administration's crime crackdown in the city when he spoke to reporters shortly before dinner.

In response to a question about the Epstein documents released yesterday, Trump denied he wrote a lewd message for the convicted sex offender's 50th birthday.

“It’s not my signature; it’s not the way I speak,” Trump told reporters outside a restaurant in d.C. tonight. He added that the message was “nonsense” and that it was an effort to distract from what he said was a successful crime crackdown in d.C. and “about 200 other things” he said his administration has accomplished.

Asked by a reporter whether he would meet with Epstein’s accusers, Trump said: “I don’t know about — nobody suggested that. Certainly, I don’t like that whole situation, with respect to anybody being abused or hurt, but I haven’t, I haven’t even thought about that.”

Earlier today, Trump told NBC News that the letter was a “dead issue.”

Trump told reporters tonight that he plans to announce a crime crackdown in another city “probably tomorrow.”

He made the remarks as he was lauding his administration’s crackdown in Washington while he was going into dinner at tJoe’s Seafood, Prime Steak and Stone Crab in downtown d.C.

He added that he loved working with democratic d.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and Police Chief Pamela Smith. Fellow democrats rebuked Bowser last month after she said crime in the district has gone down since Trump’s surge of federal law enforcement in the city.

Polls closed at 8 p.m. ET in Boston, where Mayor Michelle Wu is competing in the first round of her race for re-election.

Watch live results come in here.

democrat James Walkinshaw has won Virginia’s deep-blue 11th Congressional district, NBC News projects, an expected win for his party that adds another democrat to the narrowly divided House of Representatives.

The seat that had been vacant since Rep. Gerry Connolly, who had esophageal cancer, died in May at age 75. Walkinshaw spent a decade as a top aide to Connolly.

democrats will have 213 representatives in the House once Walkinshaw is sworn in, while Republicans have 219 representatives, with three seats still vacant because of deaths and resignations. A number of key votes loom on the horizon.

Read the full story here.

Polls closed at 7 p.m. in Virginia, where democrat James Walkinshaw is favored in the special election for a deep-blue congressional district. He faces Republican Stewart Whitson for Northern Virginia's 11th district, which gave about two-thirds of its votes to Vice President Kamala Harris last year.

Trump signed a memo about the administration's plans to strictly enforce federal rules on direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical ads.

Ahead of the signing, a senior administration official announced that the White House would send "approximately 100 cease and desist enforcement letters and thousands of warning letters warning companies that we plan to enforce these regulations that are currently on the books."

"We are also going to be looking hard at social media companies, social media influencers, that is, that have influencers paid to promote pharmaceutical products without proper disclosures or without following the same rules that pharmaceutical companies follow," the official added.

An official also said the administration wanted to rebuild public trust and make sure people are aware of a drug's potential harms. The goal of the presidential action, according to the official, was not to see the number of pharmaceutical ads drop.

A bipartisan group of House members will make an official trip to China this month, lawmakers told NBC News today, the first such official visit by members of the House since 2019.

The trip comes at a moment of fraught political and economic tensions between Washington and Beijing, weeks after the leaders of China, Russia and North Korea met in Tiananmen Square and observed a massive military parade.

The U.S. congressional delegation, or COdEL, to China, which has not previously been reported, is being organized by Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the former chairman of the Armed Services Committee and the current top democrat on the panel. Smith confirmed the trip to NBC News this afternoon.

A second lawmaker confirmed they were attending the COdEL, as well. Smith said that both democratic and Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee would participate but that Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., would not be part of the delegation.

Read the full story here.

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that immigration agents can resume roving patrols in the Los Angeles area that target people of Latino origin, again granting an emergency request by the Trump administration without offering any explanation.

It was the 18th time since Trump retook office in January that the court has sided with his administration in an emergency ruling. The court has rejected Trump just twice, prompting considerable criticism within the legal community, including from lower court judges.

Such cases arise on the so-called shadow docket, and the current Supreme Court often decides them via terse orders that include little or, in the case of yesterday's decision, no explanation. That differs from the court’s traditional practice of hearing oral arguments and issuing lengthy written opinions.

Last week, 10 federal judges told NBC News that the Supreme Court needed to do more to explain such decisions at a time when they are increasingly facing violent threats and harsh criticism from Trump and his allies.

Read the full story here.

Trump announced on social media this afternoon that Elizabeth Tsurkov, who was kidnapped in 2023, has been released from the custody of Kata’ib Hezbollah, a Shia militia in Iraq, and is at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq.

"I am pleased to report that Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Princeton Student, whose sister is an American Citizen, was just released by Kata’ib Hezbollah," Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that she is "now safely in the American Embassy in Iraq after being tortured for many months."

Tsurkov, a citizen of Israel and Russia, was abducted by the militia, which obtains funding from the Iraqi government, while she was conducting research in Iraq for her dissertation.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani confirmed Tsurkov's release on X and said his country "will not tolerate any compromise in enforcing the law and upholding the authority of the state, nor will we allow anyone to undermine the reputation of Iraq and its people."

A bipartisan group of staffers from the House Oversight Committee will travel to New York City tomorrow to meet with lawyers for Jeffrey Epstein's estate and view unredacted versions of the documents the estate is turning over to the committee, according to a source familiar with the visit.

NBC News has reported that materials the estate is transmitting are redacted but that the committee staff members will be able to view the original unredacted versions in person.

“As agreed with the Committee, the Co-Executors will make the original 'birthday book' and unredacted versions of documents, records and other materials available to Committee members and their staff for their personal examination and review,” the lawyers for the Epstein estate wrote in their production cover letter to the committee yesterday.

The lawyers referred to the materials transmitted yesterday as the “first production of documents.”

The Supreme Court today allowed the Trump administration to withhold $4 billion in spending on foreign aid Congress had appropriated, at least temporarily.

Chief Justice John Roberts issued a brief order in response to the administration’s emergency request yesterday seeking to block a federal judge’s ruling that would have required the administration to spend the funds.

It is not a final decision, but it means the case is on hold while the Supreme Court decides what next steps to take.

Roberts asked the groups that sued the administration to ensure the money is spent to file a response to the government’s request by Friday afternoon.

Read the full story here.

The Supreme Court agreed this afternoon to quickly decide a high-stakes showdown over Trump’s tariffs on imports from foreign nations, a signature policy of his second term.

At issue is Trump’s power to unilaterally impose tariffs, without congressional approval, under a law reserved for use in times of emergency.

The court took two cases covering most of Trump’s tariffs, one of which the Trump administration filed last week after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled Aug. 29 that Trump exceeded his authority. The other case is a similar challenge brought by two educational toy companies.

The tariffs, for now, remain in effect while the court decides the case.

Read the full story here.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at her briefing today that Justice department officials had "preliminary" conversations about the possibility of banning transgender people from owning guns.

“I saw reporting on this — I understand there were very preliminary, low-level discussions about this at the department of Justice, and then sometimes those discussions are reported as fact," she said. "I’m not tracking any potential actions on this front, and I’ll let the president weigh in on that. It’s a policy decision, and it’s far too early, or would be premature, inappropriate for me, to weigh in on it at this point in time.”

Multiple news outlets reported that the Justice department was looking into ways to prevent transgender people from owning firearms after the deadly shooting at a Catholic school in Minneapolis. The suspect was a transgender woman.

At his weekly news conference this afternoon, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.d., said he “can’t comment” on whether he would bring a vote on the Senate floor to force the Justice department to release the Epstein files, as is being debated in the House. 

“I believe that transparency is always best, and you should get as much information out there as you possibly can in a way that obviously protects the rights of the victims,” Thune told NBC News. “But whether or not we would take some action on it, I think, is a hypothetical question.”

Missouri House Republicans just passed a bill to redraw the state’s congressional maps, an effort Trump backed as he seeks to bolster his party's House majority in the 2026 elections.

Republicans say the new maps would result in an additional Republican congressional seat by redrawing the district held by longtime democratic Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver.

The vote was 90-65, with 13 Republicans voting against the new maps.

The bill now goes to the Senate, which is scheduled to begin its special session tomorrow afternoon. Progressive groups plan to hold a large rally outside the State Capitol tomorrow in opposition.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Israel's strike against Hamas leadership in doha today "does not advance Israel or America’s goals."

The U.S. military notified the Trump administration this morning that Israel was attacking Hamas, "unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States," Leavitt said in a prepared statement she read at today's briefing.

Leavitt said that Qatar is working with the United States to broker peace in the Middle East and that the attack "does not advance Israel or America's goals."

"However, eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal," she added.

Trump immediately directed U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff to inform the Qataris of the impending attack, Leavitt said.

Leavitt said the administration would support a handwriting expert's reviewing the birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein to prove the White House’s claim that it does not bear Trump's signature.

She reiterated the White House's claim that Trump did not write the letter.

"He did not sign this letter, and that's why the president's external legal team is aggressively pursuing litigation against The Wall Street Journal, and they will continue to," she said.

The Trump administration's crackdown in d.C. resulted in 57 arrests overnight, according to a White House official.

Among those arrested were 14 undocumented immigrants, the official said, adding some of those had previous arrests for grand larceny, felony breaking and entering, trespassing and driving while intoxicated. The official did not give an exact breakdown of how many had previous arrests or the statuses of those cases.

Others arrested included a person who had a warrant for assault with the intent to kill, another who had a warrant for armed carjacking and a third who had a warrant for simple assault, Leavitt said at her briefing.

The subject, who was arrested on warrant for armed carjacking, assaulted a man in the face with a firearm and took his key, the White House official said.

There have been 2,177 arrests since Trump ordered the crackdown last month, the official said.

The family of Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre praised the House Oversight Committee for releasing the documents it received yesterday from the late sex offender's estate, calling it a "step towards real accountability."

“We want to express our gratitude to the House Oversight Committee for releasing the subpoenaed records provided by Jeffrey Epstein’s estate," the statement said.

"Their commitment to truth and transparency is commendable, and the first step towards real accountability for our sister, survivors, and the many who have suffered in silence," it added, calling the moment "a turning point."

"The release of these files should not only incriminate the individuals who helped build Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s child and adult sex trafficking network, but also expose the systemic failures that allowed them to act unchecked," the statement said. "The evidence in these documents is a stark reminder of the trauma these survivors endured for far too long." 

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke on ABC’s “The View” today about the impact of upending years of precedent — something she has acknowledged has happened more than she “ever hoped” in recent years. 

“The price we pay is whatever is happening today, as I indicated, it’s going to affect a lot of people, but it affects your future, and it affects the conduct of leaders in the future, because what we permit today is not going to be duplicated exactly tomorrow,” Sotomayor said. “It’s going to be something different. It will be a different group of people. It will be a different situation. But once we’ve approved it, it sets a precedent that can be, in your judgment — because in the end, you’re the people affected, right? — Really bad.” 

“That’s what’s at risk is in each time we change precedent,” Sotomayor said. “We are changing the contours of a right that people thought they had. And once you take that away, think of how much more is at risk later, not just in this situation.” 

The justice's appearance comes one day after she issued a blistering dissenting opinion in an emergency docket ruling over the constitutionality of immigration stops in Los Angeles.

House democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar, d-Calif., told reporters on Capitol Hill that Trump creates distractions when negative economic data comes out, including the BLS report today.

“The truth is donald Trump is trying to tank our economy. And every time negative economic data is put out, the deflections start, Chicago, going after boats in Venezuela,” Aguilar said, referring to the president's threats to send federal agents or troops to Chicago and the U.S. strike on a boat that left Venezuela last week.

He continued, “I mean, like all of these things are direct through line to the distractions of what the Trump administration knows the American people are focused on.”

Cracker Barrel said today that it would not remodel its restaurants after conservative backlash to changes at the country-themed restaurant chain.

The company said in a news release that it was not going forward with plans to expand its “modern remodel design” it had implemented at a handful of its 660 locations.

The announcement came on the heels of Cracker Barrel’s reversal to change its logo after conservatives accused the restaurant chain of changing its values or going “woke.”

Read the full story here.

Asked for his reaction to the birthday note Trump allegedly sent Epstein, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said, “I would say I don’t have an observation about that."

"I think the, you know, there’s a dispute about whether that’s really a signature,” Thune told reporters. “So, I mean, I think right now, it’s just going to be — that’s going to be argued back and forth.”

The Republican from South dakota was asked by NBC News last week about what actions the Senate was taking on the Epstein case and he said, “I’m in favor of more transparency.” 

 “I think that as much information as they can put out there again that protects victims is good, and so I’m encouraging that,” he said. 

Redistricting efforts in states across the U.S. could play a big role in who gains control of the House in the 2026 midterm elections. NBC News’ Steve Kornacki breaks down where Republicans and democrats could get more congressional seats.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters today he has not yet seen the Epstein birthday book note and drawing that was allegedly contributed by Trump, and appeared to shrug it off.

"I haven’t. I’ve heard about it, but no — and the White House says it’s not true," Johnson said.

The speaker made similar remarks last night, telling reporters, "I haven’t dialed in on that, but I’m told that it’s fake."

Johnson also walked back a claim yesterday that he'd made Friday that Trump “was an FBI informant" in the Epstein case who'd worked "to take this stuff down."

"I don’t know if I used the right word. I said FBI informant. I’m not sure. I wasn’t there. This isn’t my lane," Johnson said, adding he was referring to years-old comments an attorney for the victims made that Trump "was willing to help law enforcement go after this guy who was a disgusting child abuser, sex trafficker, all the allegations, that’s what they heard.”

Trump told NBC News earlier in the day the letter was "a dead issue." He has a $10 billion defamation suit pending against the Wall Street Journal for its reporting on the note. The suit calls the note "nonexistent" and alleges “no authentic letter or drawing exists.”

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said this morning that he stands by Trump’s claim that the birthday note he is alleged to have given Epstein is not “legit."

Citing his meeting with Epstein victims last week, Comer said they never mentioned the president or former President Bill Clinton, who, like Trump, was friends with Epstein and appears to have written a note to him in the collection of birthday wishes he received for his 50th birthday in 2003.  

"In that two-and-a-half hour meeting, when they were talking about all of the crimes that they endured, no one ever mentioned donald Trump’s name, no one ever mentioned Bill Clinton’s name ... None of the victims nor their attorneys were saying anything about, 'Oh, look up this birthday card to see if it’s legit or not.'" Comer said. "The president says it’s not. I take the president’s word."

Clinton's office did not respond to NBC News' request for comment after the Oversight Committee released more Epstein-related files yesterday.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt blamed former President Joe Biden for the weak labor market in the 12 months through March.

Leavitt said in a statement that the Bureau of Labor Statistics today released "the largest downward revision on record proving that President Trump was right: Biden’s economy was a disaster and the BLS is broken."

"This is exactly why we need new leadership to restore trust and confidence in the BLS’s data on behalf of the financial markets, businesses, policymakers, and families that rely on this data to make major decisions," she added. "Much like the BLS has failed the American people, so has Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell — who has officially run out of excuses and must cut the rates now.”

U.S. jobs growth was much slower than previously reported, according to revised data released on Tuesday.

The number of jobs created in the United States from April 2024 to March 2025 was revised down by 911,000 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That would roughly amount to 76,000 fewer jobs created each month of the year up until March.

The revision draws fresh attention to the weakening U.S. labor market, which added an average of only 29,000 jobs in each of the three most recent months.

Read the full story here.

Fifteen so-called fake electors in Michigan will not face a criminal trial over their alleged involvement in efforts to overturn former President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win in the state, Judge Kristen d. Simmons announced this morning.

“These cases will not be bound over to the circuit court,” Simmons, a state district court judge, said. “Each case will be dismissed.”

Simmons said the Michigan Republicans involved in the effort were trying to seek redress after Trump’s 2020 election loss and attempted to perform their civic duties.

Read the full story here.

Missouri's House of Representatives just gaveled in as lawmakers are expected to debate and pass new congressional lines to redraw districts to net Republicans an extra seat in Congress.

The bill passed a key procedural vote last night and lawmakers could vote as early as today to approve the lines, which carve up the seat currently held by democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. While the legislation still needs to be passed by the Senate, it's expected to be approved by the end of the week.

If the new lines pass as expected, it would be the third state legislature to move forward approving a rare mid-decade redistricting aimed at influencing the balance of power in Washington. Last month, Texas Republicans passed new lines that could net their party up to five more seats in Congress, leading California democrats to approve new maps to counter that push, although the California plan still needs to be approved by voters this fall for it to go into effect.

Reached briefly by phone this morning, Trump declined to comment on the birthday message he is alleged to have sent to Jeffrey Epstein that House Oversight Committee democrats released yesterday, calling it a “dead issue.” 

Told that NBC News had heard from a number of people at the White House about the message, but not from him, the president responded: “I don’t comment on something that’s a dead issue. I gave all comments to the staff. It’s a dead issue."

The note, which included a lewd outline of a woman's figure, was included in a leather-bound collection of messages that Epstein's friends gave him for his 50th birthday in 2003. It included a handwritten note that appeared to be from former President Bill Clinton. Clinton's office did not immediately respond to NBC News' request for comment after the committee released the files.

For more than 15 years, before they conducted any operation to arrest an immigrant in the United States, officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division have been required to fill out a form with details about their target — name, appearance, known addresses and employment, immigration history, any criminal history and more — and give it to a supervisor for approval.

This year, in a sign of how the agency has moved from targeted enforcement to broad street sweeps under the Trump administration, that policy has been ended, six current and former officials and agents of ICE and the department of Homeland Security told NBC News.

Read the full story here.

The Trump administration is expanding its show of federal force in Chicago by launching what it calls Operation Midway Blitz with hundreds of Homeland Security officials. It’s part of a recent push by the president escalating the government’s presence in major democratic-run cities, including Los Angeles. NBC’s Gabe Gutierrez reports for "TOdAY."

A House committee released a trove of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein yesterday that included a lewd note Trump is alleged to have sent as part of a collection of messages for the late convicted sex offender’s 50th birthday more than two decades ago.

The so-called birthday book was by far the most revealing of the records made public from the subpoena the Republican-led House Oversight Committee sent to Epstein’s estate last month. The panel released all of the documents it received hours after democrats on the committee posted an image of the birthday letter that was signed “donald.”

Trump has denied having had anything to do with the card, which was included in a leather-bound book of birthday messages for Epstein in 2003.

Read the full story here.

Texas state Rep. James Talarico announced today that he will run for U.S. Senate, setting up a competitive democratic primary in a red state the party is hoping to put in play next year.

Talarico, 36, has been billed as a rising democratic star and was one of the party’s leading voices in Texas’ redistricting fight this summer. He also garnered national attention after appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast in July.

Read the full story here.

democrats have the opportunity to fill in vacant, deep-blue House seat in northern Virginia this evening, while voters in Boston will take the first step in Mayor Michelle Wu's bid for a second term.

Here's what to know about the two races:

Virginia's 11th Congressional district: democrat James Walkinshaw, a Fairfax County supervisor, is heavily favored to take over the seat once represented by the late Rep. Gerry Connolly. Walkinshaw previously served as Connolly's chief of staff, and Connolly endorsed his former aide before he died.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris won nearly two-thirds of the vote in the district last fall. Barring an upset by Republican Stewart Whitson, the special election will bring democrats' numbers in the House up to 213 — giving them another member as they seek just a few more signatures needed to force a vote on requiring the Justice department to release more files related to Jeffrey Epstein.

Boston mayor: The nonpartisan primary will see the top two finishers advance to the general election. The handful of public polls in the race show the progressive Wu ahead and nonprofit executive Josh Kraft, son of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, with a hold on second place. The big question is how steep the margin between them is — and what that might mean for the general election in the fall.

Robert Cappucci and domingos daRosa are also on the ballot.