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Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor said Friday that a judge lacks the authority to appoint a neutral expert to oversee the public release of documents in the sex trafficking probe of financier Jeffrey Epstein and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.

Judge Paul A. Engelmayer was told in a letter signed by U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton that he must reject a request this week by the congressional cosponsors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act to appoint a neutral expert.

U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, and Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, say they have “urgent and grave concerns” about the slow release of only a small number of millions of documents that began last month.

In a filing to the judge they said they believed “criminal violations have taken place” in the release process.

Clayton, though, said Khanna and Massie do not have standing with the court that would allow them to seek the “extraordinary” relief of the appointment of a special master and independent monitor.

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Since September, 16 major drug companies have inked deals with the Trump administration to lower prices. But in January — the time of year when pharmaceutical companies typically roll out price hikes — all 16 companies released higher list prices for some of their drugs.

The agreements, nicknamed "most favored nation" deals, were aimed at getting lower prices for American consumers and pushing other wealthy countries to pay higher prices for new drugs.

But drug companies, including the 16 that made deals, raised the prices of 872 brand-name drugs in the first two weeks of 2026, according to a new analysis by 46brooklyn, a drug price research firm.The drugs with price hikes included medicines to treat cancer, heart failure and Type 2 diabetes. The price of some COVID shots also went up.

"The real truth serum is what's happening in the marketplace after those deals occur," says Antonio Ciaccia, CEO of 46brooklyn, a nonprofit that tracks the list prices of prescription medications. "January is prime time for list price changes on brand-name drugs. So in examining where we are today, we're pretty much in line with the last few years."

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The American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit over the Trump administration’s immigration operation in Minneapolis describes a mass “racial profiling campaign” resulting in “an unprecedented level of violence” against Minnesotans of color.

“People targeted by ICE have been handcuffed, tackled, and beaten by federal agents. Agents have broken car windows, dragged people from their cars, and used pepper spray and tear gas against compliant, non-violent people,” the lawsuit reads.

The three plaintiffs in the case, who are all US citizens, are Mubashir Khalif Hussen, a 20-year-old Somali man who grew up in the United States after his family came to the country as refugees, Mahamed Eydarus, a 25-year-old Somali-American and Javier Doe, a 22-year-old Hispanic man.

On December 10, 2025, Hussen encountered immigration agents while on his lunch break. The lawsuit describes agents pushing him into a restaurant, dragging him outside, placing him in a headlock, and then driving him to an ICE field office where he was denied medical assistance and water – despite Hussen’s repeated statements that he was a US citizen.driving him to an ICE field office where he was denied medical assistance and water – despite Hussen’s repeated statements that he was a US citizen.

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European troops were arriving in Greenland on Thursday in a show of support, as leaders scrambling to respond to President Donald Trump’s threats were thrown another American curveball.

Trump pushed ahead with his aim of “conquering” one European territory, Denmark’s top diplomat saihttps://www.nbcnews.com/world/greenland/european-troops-arrive-greenland-trump-throws-curveball-rcna254166?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-usd after a high-stakes meeting in Washington on Wednesday.

The president then sided with the man who invaded another, casting Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy rather than Russia’s Vladimir Putin as the obstacle to peace, in his latest reversal on the conflict already raging on the continent.

Trump's comments drew new pushback from leaders in Europe, whose alarm over U.S. actions had for weeks been focused farther north.

Small numbers of military personnel from France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Finland, Norway and Sweden were arriving in the Arctic island early Thursday.

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US civil rights pioneer Claudette Colvin, arrested at age 15 for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white woman in Montgomery, Alabama, nine months before Rosa Parks’s similar but more famous act of defiance, died on Tuesday at age 86.

Although she remained a largely unsung figure in the civil rights movement for decades, Colvin’s 1955 act of rebellion inspired Parks and others and helped form the basis for the federal lawsuit that outlawed racial segregation in US public transportation.

Her death, under hospice care in Texas, was confirmed by Ashley Roseboro, a spokesperson for her family and the Claudette Colvin Foundation.

In one of the first publicized acts of civil disobedience against Montgomery’s Jim Crow rules governing city bus seating by race, Colvin refused to relinquish her seat for a white woman, as ordered by the driver, and stayed put until she was dragged off the bus by police.

According to accounts of her testimony in court, Colvin recalled she had been studying anti-slavery abolitionist heroes in school, and felt that she had Harriet Tubman on one shoulder, Sojourner Truth on the other, and “history had me glued to the seat.”

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Russian strikes damaged the Polish consulate in the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa overnight, according to Poland’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Maciej Wewiór.

"As a result of the overnight bombardment, the Polish consulate in Odesa was damaged,” Wewiór wrote on X, describing it as “another night of Russian terror.”

He added that no consulate employees had been injured and praised the diplomats’ work, saying: “Great respect for the entire [Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs] team working in Ukraine.”

Russia overnight struck cities across the country in one of its largest attacks of the yr so far.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Moscow had launched almost 300 drones, 18 ballistic missiles and seven cruise missiles in the sweeping attacks which affected eight regions and targeted energy-generation facilities and substations.

Four people were killed in Kharkiv when missiles and drones hit a postal terminal.

At least five people were injured in Odesa as temperatures dropped to –7°C and fires broke out at a residential building, a fitness center and a garage, causing extensive damage.

Emergency psychologists were forced to assist 14 people, including one child.

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Several faculty groups have denounced the Trump administration’s efforts to obtain information about Jewish professors, staff and students at the University of Pennsylvania – including personal emails, phone numbers and home addresses – as government abuse with “ominous historical overtones”.

The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is demanding the university turn over names and personal information about Jewish members of the Penn community as part of the administration’s stated goal to combat antisemitism on campuses. But some Jewish faculty and staff have condemned the government’s demand as “a visceral threat to the safety of those who would find themselves identified because compiling and turning over to the government ‘lists of Jews’ conjures a terrifying history”, according to a press release put out by the groups’ lawyers.

The EEOC sued Penn in November over the university’s refusal to fully comply with its demands. On Tuesday, the American Association of University Professors’ national and Penn chapters, the university’s Jewish Law Students Association and its Association of Senior and Emeritus Faculty, and the American Academy of Jewish Research filed a motion in federal court to intervene in the case.

“These requests would require Penn to create and turn over a centralized registry of Jewish students, faculty, and staff – a profoundly invasive and dangerous demand that intrudes deeply into the freedoms of association, religion, speech, and privacy enshrined in the First Amendment,” the groups argued.

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A federal judge late Sunday ordered the Trump administration to restore nearly $12 million in grants to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), after the organization’s funding was abruptly cut last month. 

Judgeof  the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted a preliminary injunction that will restore the grants and block the cuts from taking effect while the case proceeds.

Howell concluded that the Department of Health and Human Services had a likely “retaliatory motive” for the terminations, due to the AAP’s outspoken opposition to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

“This is not a case about whether AAP or HHS is right or even has the better position on vaccinations and gender-affirming care for children, or any other public health policy,” Howell wrote. “This is a case about whether the federal government has exercised power in a manner designed to chill public health policy debate by retaliating against a leading and generally trusted pediatrician member professional organization focused on improving the health of children.”

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