Donald Trump and his administration are rehashing old grievances amid fallout over its handling of the Epstein case. Actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner drowns on vacation in Costa Rica. And fans spent hours waiting in line before the Tesla Diner opened at exactly 4:20 p.m. in Hollywood.
Here’s what to know today.
Trump intelligence chiefs attempt to rewrite 2016 election history amid Epstein case fallout
The Trump administration appears to be trying to move on from the conversation about its handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case with a flurry of new social media posts from President Donald Trump, the release of new Justice Department files and by bringing up old grievances.
Trump threatened to block a new football stadium in Washington, D.C., if the Commanders didn’t change their name back to the Redskins. The administration also released records of the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr. yesterday despite opposition from his family. It was not immediately clear whether they would shed any new light on King’s life, the Civil Rights Movement or his murder. Afterward’s, King’s daughter, Bernice King, posted on X: “Now, do the Epstein files.”
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And Trump’s intelligence chiefs are conducting a systematic campaign to rewrite the history of the 2016 election. National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe have cited declassified emails to allege that Obama administration officials manipulated intelligence and conspired to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s electoral victory in 2016.
Gabbard said the emails reveal a “treasonous conspiracy” by Obama administration officials to undermine Trump’s authority as president. Ratcliffe said a review of a 2017 intelligence assessment showed Democratic appointees at the time “silenced career professionals — all to get to Trump.”
But a bipartisan senate investigation in 2020 and a recent CIA review both found that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was the acting chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020, signed off on the committee’s findings that there was no evidence of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia. But, he added, there was “irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling.”
More politics news:
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In a critical hearing over the Trump administration’s threat to slash funding to Harvard University, the Ivy League school accused the administration of violating First Amendment rights while the DOJ argued the funding cuts are a means to protect against antisemitism.
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Andrew Cuomo made opposition to Trump a major part of his primary campaign for New York mayor. But the president is absent from the former New York governor’s general election reboot.
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The director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland announced her resignation, marking another high-profile departure as questions loom about the agency’s future.
xAI’s last-minute Pentagon deal
The Defense Department’s inclusion of Elon Musk’s xAI in contracts worth up to $200 million was a last-minute addition, a former Pentagon employee said. That decision has raised some eyebrows, especially on the heels of xAI’s chatbot, Grok, going on an antisemitic tirade.
The program, announced last week, also includes Anthropic, Google and OpenAI. It’s billed as a partnership between the Defense Department and U.S. tech companies that are on the frontier of AI development. Glenn Parham, the former Pentagon employee, said the contracts had been in the works for months, dating back to the Biden administration. Before Parham took a government buyout in March, he said the contracts had not included xAI.
It’s not clear what prompted Pentagon officials to add xAI to the mix of contracts, and the Pentagon said in a statement that Grok’s antisemitism episode wasn’t enough to disqualify it. Critics are unsure whether xAI’s models are reliable enough for government work. Other companies awarded contracts have already gone through a lengthy government review, while xAI hadn’t done the same before Parham left his Pentagon job, he said.
Psychiatrists speak out about FDA panel on antidepressants
An FDA panel discussing the use of antidepressants during pregnancy largely amounted to misinformation or facts taken out of context, according to several psychiatrists who tuned in to yesterday’s meeting. Nearly all 10 of the panelists bucked medical consensus on the safety of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, and claimed there were risks associated with taking the drugs while pregnant, such as autism, miscarriages or birth defects. Some panelists claimed that antidepressants don’t work at all and that depression goes away on its own. Only one panelist advocated for using SSRIs and pushed back against others’ assessments of the risks.
“They were really rousing concerns about safety that are not evidence-based or established and not at all balanced with concerns about the risks of untreated depression,” said Dr. Joseph Goldberg, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.
Certain studies have found a slightly elevated risk of miscarriage associated with antidepressant use in pregnancy. However, there’s no convincing evidence to suggest that SSRIs are linked to autism or birth defects. Read the full story here.
‘The Cosby Show’ actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner dies at 54
Malcolm-Jamal Warner, the actor best known for his role as Theo Huxtable on “The Cosby Show,” drowned after he was swept out to sea in Costa Rica, authorities there said. He was 54 years old. Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigation Department said Warner was swimming at Pala Cocles in Limón province on Sunday when a current dragged him deeper into the sea. A source close to Warner said he was on vacation with his wife and young daughter, and his family is in the process of bringing his body back to the U.S. for a funeral.
Warner rose to prominence for his role as Bill Cosby’s fictional son in “The Cosby Show,” which ran for eight seasons. He went on to star in “Malcolm & Eddie” and tried his hand at directing. Warner also played the bass, winning a Grammy in 2015 for his work as a featured performer, and he starred in multiple off-Broadway productions. Read the full story here.
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A growing number of children in Gaza are dying of malnutrition as thousands of people the enclave suffer from a dire lack of food.
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The FAA, Air Force and SkyWest Airlines is investigating a near-collision between a B-52 bomber and a SkyWest jet in North Dakota that was caught on camera.
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A Jacksonville, Florida, police officer was “stripped of his duties,” authorities said, after a video online showed a white officer punching a Black man in the face during a traffic stop.
Staff Pick: Superfans turn out for Tesla Diner’s opening
A Optimus robot waves as it serves popcorn at the Tesla Diner in West Hollywood, Calif., on July 21, 2025 (Angela Yang / NBC News)
Superfans packed the sidewalks near Elon Musk’s long-awaited Tesla Diner in Hollywood on its opening day. Some had been waiting outside since early morning, though the diner didn’t open its doors until 4:20 p.m., a reference the Tesla CEO often makes to marijuana. I talked to people whose hunger and patience, as well as their electric vehicles’ battery life, were tested as they looked forward to getting their first glimpse of the futuristic diner and its popcorn-serving humanoid robot, Optimus. — Angela Yang, culture & trends reporter
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This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
