An Intensified Push for the Epstein Files, and Google’s Big Monopoly Ruling

0:00This podcast is supported by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Here's a story that's not getting nearly enough attention. Defunding Planned Parenthood has already caused chaos and harm, and access to essential reproductive care is plummeting. Right now, the Trump administration's backers in Congress want to permanently defund Planned Parenthood, forcing even more health centers to close, and millions at risk of losing access to care. It takes less than a minute to help. Go to plannedparenthood.org slash defend and make a gift of any size. From The New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford.

0:37Today's Wednesday, September 3rd. Here's what we're covering.

0:45Lawmakers came back to the U.S. Capitol this week after their summer recess. And while Republican leadership had hoped that the five-week break might tamp down the uproar over the Epstein files, that did not happen. Here's the problem. When people go through this trove of documents, the political cover is going to go away and they're going to be exposed once again. Instead, Representative Thomas Massey, a Republican from Kentucky and a frequent critic of President Trump, is pushing forward with a measure that would force the House to vote on whether to demand that the administration release all of its investigative material related to the case.

1:23Epstein, whose rich and powerful friends included Trump, died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. For years, Trump himself alluded to a potential cover-up in the case, and he's been facing a backlash from his base after the Justice Department closed the investigation without revealing all of what it discovered. To move forward, Massey will need all House Democrats and at least a few Republicans to sign on to his effort. If the bill passes, it would require the Justice Department to release its files within 30 days. I think that's obvious nonsense. We are demonstrating here that this is being done, but I'm going to emphasize again, it has to be done in the right way.

2:04Republican leaders, however, are urging their members not to sign it. The White House called Massey's effort a very hostile act to the administration. And House Speaker Mike Johnson said it was potentially harmful to Epstein's victims. We have to very carefully guard their identities. We cannot be haphazard about this. If there's any delay at all, that's what the intention is. In another attempt to satisfy the calls for transparency, the House Oversight Committee released 33 ,000 pages of records last night from the Justice Department's investigation into Epstein. Most of what was released was not new.

2:39This morning, some of Epstein's victims are scheduled to appear at a press conference alongside Massey and the Democratic representative from California, Ro Khanna, who has co-sponsored the bill demanding the file's release.

3:00Now, three updates on the Trump administration. A federal judge ruled yesterday that the administration's deployment of troops to Los Angeles earlier this summer was illegal. The administration sent nearly 5 ,000 Marines and National Guard troops into Southern California in June after protests broke out over immigration. The judge accused the government of effectively turning those troops into a, quote, national police force. U.S. law generally prohibits the use of the military for domestic law enforcement, except in the extreme case of an insurrection. Trump quickly denounced the ruling, saying it was made by a, quote, radical left judge, and the administration is expected to appeal.

3:41When asked if the ruling affected his plans to deploy National Guard troops to other cities, the president vowed to continue, saying of Chicago specifically, quote, we're going in. Also, late last night, a federal appeals court blocked President Trump from using the Alien Enemies Act to quickly deport Venezuelan migrants. The rarely invoked wartime law from the 1700s allows the U.S. to expel members of a foreign nation in the case of an invasion. The administration had claimed that the migrants were members of a violent gang with roots in Venezuela, constituting an invading force. The court rejected that argument.

4:21A lawyer for the ACLU who argued the case said the ruling makes clear that, quote, the president cannot simply declare a military emergency and then invoke whatever powers he wants. And when you come out and when you leave the room, you'll see that we just over the last few minutes literally shot out a boat, a drug carrying boat, a lot of drugs in that boat. In a dramatic escalation of his war against drug cartels, President Trump announced yesterday that the U.S. military blew up a speedboat he claimed was carrying illegal drugs through international waters bound for the U.S. Trump said 11 Venezuelan gang members who he called, quote, terrorists were killed in the operation.

5:06The strike is a marked departure from the U.S.'s traditional approach, which is to focus on seizing drugs, identifying suspects, and building a criminal case. It comes as Trump has labeled Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, a terrorist cartel leader. And the U.S.'s Navy has been building up its presence outside Venezuela's waters. A senior U.S. official, speaking with the Times on condition of anonymity, said there would be more attacks against cartel boats.

5:39For the last year, the tech giant Google has been on edge, waiting for the outcome of a landmark monopoly case against the company. Last August, a judge ruled Google had broken the law and illegally maintained its dominance in online search. Since then, the judge has been weighing what the company needs to do to fix that. Government lawyers argued that to level the playing field, Google needed to sell off its Chrome browser or its Android operating system. They also wanted the judge to bar Google from continuing to pay companies like Apple billions of dollars to make it the default search option on iPhones and browsers.

6:17So the question hanging over the company was whether the judge would impose something that drastic. Yesterday, the judge came back with a ruling, and the answer was no, that Google could continue to operate more or less the way it has in the past. My colleague Tripp Mickel covers Silicon Valley. He says Google basically dodged a bullet with yesterday's ruling. It won't have to break itself up or sell anything off, and it can still make big payments to Apple to automatically handle search queries. What it does need to do is share some of its search data with competitors. The judge said that would help them improve their systems, Though it's unclear how big of an impact that will actually have.

6:58The CEO of OneSearch competitor, DuckDuckGo, called it a, quote, nothing burger. The ruling stopped far short of what many competitors wanted and the government had sought from Google in terms of changes. In essence, its business remains largely intact. In his ruling, the judge said the rise of AI had, quote, changed the course of this case. He wrote that Google might soon face a lot more fierce competition, given how quickly AI has overhauled search capabilities in particular.

7:39In another tech development, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has announced that it's introducing new safety features, including parental controls. The company said the update will allow parents to receive notifications when the system, quote, detects their teen is in a moment of acute distress. The change comes after the parents of a 16-year-old who ended his life sued OpenAI, claiming the technology led to his death. The teen had talked with ChatGPT about suicide for months. The chatbot shared words of empathy and urged him to tell others how he felt, but it also provided information about suicide methods.

8:19and gave positive feedback on a noose that he tied. OpenAI said it was deeply saddened by the teen's death and that it will now route certain queries to what it described as a safer model of its technology. Experts on AI safety told The Times that OpenAI hasn't released enough details about these changes for them to evaluate whether they will be effective. One researcher who studies AI and mental health said these were, quote, vague promises with no means of evaluation.

8:58And finally... This island was the research facility for the original Jurassic Park. This summer was supposed to be Hollywood's triumphant return at the box office. I'm not the one being interviewed, Superman. Big budget movies were supposed to swoop in and save theaters in the U.S. from the slump they've been in ever since the pandemic. The chief executive of AMC, the theater chain giant, even predicted in May that this would be the summer of, quote, barn burners, one after another. Mr. Fantastic.

9:31But moviegoers did not show up. Data shows it was actually the worst summer at the box office since 1981, not counting when theaters were closed for COVID. There are a lot of factors at play. Streaming has obviously changed everything. Marketing is harder than ever with such a fractured media landscape. In the face of all of that, studios have tried to rely on well-known franchises to bring people in. But this summer's numbers could indicate that tactic may be tapped out. 20 of the biggest movies this summer were sequels, spinoffs, remakes, reboots, etc. But more than half of them did worse than the previous iteration.

10:12Even still, next year's promising more of the same. At least 14 franchise films are coming summer 2026.

10:23Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, a look at the Trump administration's push to revise American history at the Smithsonian. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.