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SummaryTrump denies WSJ report on Epstein birthday letter U.S. wants Epstein grand jury transcripts made public Trump supporters demand more Epstein documents Dow Jones defends accuracy of its reporting WASHINGTON/NEW YORK, July 18 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump sued the Wall Street Journal and its owners including Rupert Murdoch for at least $10 billion on Friday, over the newspaper's report that his name was on a 2003 birthday greeting for Jeffrey Epstein that included a sexually suggestive drawing and a reference to secrets they shared. The lawsuit filed in Miami federal court names Murdoch, Dow Jones, News Corp (NWSA.O)...

BREAKING NEWS: We have just filed a POWERHOUSE Lawsuit against everyone involved in publishing the false, malicious, defamatory, FAKE NEWS “article” in the useless “rag” that is, The Wall Street Journal. This historic legal action is being brought against the so-called authors of this defamation, the now fully disgraced WSJ, as well as its corporate owners and affiliates, with Rupert Murdoch and Robert Thomson (whatever his role is!) at the top of the list. We have proudly held to account ABC and George Slopadopoulos, CBS and 60 Minutes, The Fake Pulitzer Prizes, and many others who deal in, and push,...

It was Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday, and Ghislaine Maxwell was preparing a special gift to mark the occasion. She turned to Epstein’s family and friends. One of them was Donald Trump. Maxwell collected letters from Trump and dozens of Epstein’s other associates for a 2003 birthday album, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The Wall Street Journal embarrassed itself Thursday by hyping a so-called Trump-Epstein “bombshell” that amounted to nothing more than a disputed birthday card from 2003 that they won’t show, and that Trump denies writing and is now suing over. The rest of the story was recycled material long in the public domain. Desperate to revive the left’s failed narrative tying Trump to Epstein, the Journal grasped at straws while ignoring Epstein’s far more substantial connections to powerful Democrats like Bill Clinton, who flew on Epstein’s jet multiple times and visited his island — facts the media still downplays to this...

A chaotic rollout of tariffs is starting to filter through to price tags on store shelves. An immigration crackdown is beginning to weigh on jobs growth, measured by federal surveys. Taken together, the impact of President Trump’s whirlwind six months back in office is showing up in the economy. The effect isn’t yet enough to derail the economy, which by many measures has weathered Trump’s trade wars much better than many on Wall Street and in Washington feared. Economists see less risk of a recession now than three months ago, a Wall Street Journal survey found. Yet a long stretch...

President Trump sure knows how to spoil an economic mood. Three days after he signed the GOP’s big budget bill, saving the economy from a scheduled $4.5 trillion tax increase, Mr. Trump was back playing the role of Tariff Man. On Monday he announced 25% tariffs on Japan and South Korea, while adding to renewed will-he-or-won’t-he uncertainty for the U.S. economy and trading partners. In letters to Japan’s Prime Minister and South Korea’s President, Mr. Trump huffs and puffs again about bilateral trade deficits, which he mistakenly thinks are a sign of foreign exploitation. “We must move away from these...

The FBI determined that Fusion GPS -- hired by Clinton's campaign -- likely served as a coordinating hub for creating several bogus Trump-Russia dossiers, and noted an unusually cozy relationship between Fusion GPS and the Department of Justice. A newly declassified FBI memo detailing the findings of its probe into Fusion GPS contractor Nellie Ohr about the veracity of her testimony to Congress delivers new details about the Hillary Clinton campaign’s fingerprints on the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. The New York Post reported that Ohr, the wife of a former Justice Department official, gave “demonstrably false” testimony to Congress...

In a ruling heard ’round the world, the U.S. Court of International Trade on Wednesday blocked President Trump’s sweeping tariffs. This is an important moment for the rule of law as much as for the economy, proving again that America doesn’t have a king who can rule by decree. The Trump tariffs have created enormous costs and uncertainty, but now we know they’re illegal. As the three-judge panel explains in its detailed 52-page ruling, the President exceeded his emergency powers and bypassed discrete tariff authorities delegated to him by Congress. The ruling erases his April 2 tariffs as well as...

Rarely has an economic policy been repudiated as soundly, and as quickly, as President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs—and by Mr. Trump’s own hand. Witness the agreement Monday morning to scale back his punitive tariffs on China—his second major retreat in less than a week. This is a win for economic reality, and for American prosperity. Make that a partial win for reality. The Administration agreed to scrap most of the 145% tariff Mr. Trump imposed on Chinese goods on April 2 and later. What remains is his new 10% global base-line tariff, plus the separate 20% levy putatively tied to...

The House Ways and Means Committee will soon release the GOP’s first draft of the party’s tax proposals, and the irony is that the bill may be getting worse even as a good bill becomes more urgent. President Trump has pitched a tax-rate increase that even Democrats failed to pass, and parochial demands are shrinking the pro-growth value of the bill. Republicans seem to have forgotten the principles of sound tax policy, even the lessons of the successful 2017 reform. Most of the 26 GOP Members of Ways and Means weren’t in Congress in 2017. The intellectual capital of previous...

The Trump administration’s global tariffs face their first major legal test this week when a little-known Manhattan court considers one of the president’s most sweeping assertions of executive power. A three-judge panel at the Court of International Trade will hear arguments Tuesday on whether to halt the levies, which have unleashed a trade war with the world and threaten to upend the global economy. The federal court, which has nationwide jurisdiction over tariff and trade disputes, operates for the most part in obscurity, rarely garnering a mention in major publications and staying off the radar of most attorneys. “Most lawyers...

The United States has reportedly encouraged intelligence agencies to ramp up spying efforts in Greenland amid President Donald Trump repeatedly floating the idea of taking over the Arctic island.... The Wall Street Journal reported, citing two sources, that high-ranking officials working under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Habbard sent a "collection of emphasis message" to the heads of various intelligence agencies last week. Intelligence agencies have been directed to learn more about the independence movement on the island and the general attitude of the Greenlanders towards American resource extraction, the Journal added. The agencies have been asked to use tools...

April was not the cruelest month for investors—although the tariffmageddon-obsessed naysayers may be smarting. Despite a month of wild swings and gloomy forecasts, U.S. stock markets ended April nearly flat, brushing off predictions that Trump’s trade policies would trigger a historic collapse. The S&P 500 finished the month down just 0.8 percent. The Dow dropped 2.1 percent, and the Nasdaq edged lower by 0.3 percent. That mild performance stood in stark contrast to a mid-April Wall Street Journal article that warned of a “Trump rout” and suggested the Dow was on track for its worst April since 1932. It wasn’t....

The U.S. economy contracted in the first three months of 2025, as businesses rushed to stock up on imports ahead of tariffs and consumers eased their pace of spending. The Commerce Department said U.S. gross domestic product—the value of all goods and services produced across the economy—fell at a seasonally and inflation adjusted 0.3% annual rate in the first quarter. That was the steepest decline since the first quarter of 2022. The reading fell short of the 0.4% growth that economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expected. The decline in GDP in the first quarter reflected front-running ahead of...

President Trump continues to walk back his original tariff assault, and markets are pleased. They rose again Wednesday after Mr. Trump said he won’t fire the Federal Reserve Chairman and is likely to retreat from his highest China tariffs. Is this Mr. Trump’s François Mitterrand moment? Readers of a certain age will recall how the French Socialist President swept into power in 1981 promising a far left agenda of government control over the private economy. The market reaction was brutal. Within a year he had put socialism on pause and by 1983 he had abandoned most of it. He went...

A popular knock on this second Donald Trump term is that the president stocked his administration with nothing but saluting loyalists. Tell that to the staffers scheming to undercut his signature tax reform—by “managing” him into surrendering to the left’s favorite talking point. A (delighted) mainstream media several weeks ago started writing stories about a new Republican interest in raising taxes on “the rich”—namely hiking the top individual tax rate from 37% to 40%, higher than even under Barack Obama. These reports all come from anonymous White House officials, and always take care to insinuate Mr. Trump is “open” to...

Not since Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff has a president chosen to disregard a larger body of informed opinion than President Trump did when he instituted his protectionist trade policy. Based on a series of verifiably false grievances—wages haven’t grown in 50 years, manufacturing has been hollowed out by imports, countries with trade surpluses are “ripping us off”—Mr. Trump used constitutionally questionable powers to abrogate congressionally approved trade agreements and undermine the world’s trading system. Markets convulsed in anticipation of the massive wealth annihilation that would accompany the shredding of global supply chains and a transition to a more...

President Trump is taking exception to the idea that his Administration is offering exceptions to his punishing tariffs. That’s the story after a confusing weekend that offers more lessons in the arbitrary nature of Trump trade policy. Late Friday his own Customs and Border Protection (CBP) department issued a notice listing products that will be exempt from Mr. Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs that can run as high as 145% on goods from China. The exclusions apply to smartphones, laptop computers, hard drives, computer processors, servers, memory chips, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and other electronics. The CBP notice takes the tariff rate...

President Trump finally blinked. It took a week for the plunge in the stock and bond markets—along with a sustained campaign by executives, lawmakers, lobbyists and foreign leaders—to prompt Trump to roll back for 90 days a major element of his sweeping tariff plan. The president said that the reaction to the tariffs was getting a bit “yippy”—like a nervous athlete unable to perform—and he relied on his instincts to change course as he watched the bond market tank and listened to business leaders including JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon express fears of a recession. The episode was classic Trump:...

President Trump says trade wars are easy to win. Investors think otherwise, and on Wednesday Mr. Trump decided maybe investors are right. After a flight from U.S. assets and a rout in the bond market, Mr. Trump announced a pause for 90 days on the worst of his “liberation” tariffs on most countries, China excepted. Markets celebrated with a stock-market rally on hope that perhaps Mr. Trump isn’t entirely oblivious to the damage he’s causing. The rout in dollar assets reversed, at least somewhat, and the rise in the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield eased. It would be hard to find...