Newly released emails from Jeffrey Epstein’s files include messages linking President Trump to the disgraced financier, as Congress prepares to vote on a bill forcing the release of the full Epstein records. After 43 days, the longest government shutdown in U.S. history ends with a bipartisan deal that leaves Democrats split over what they gained. And with health insurance subsidies still set to expire, millions of Americans could soon face higher premiums unless lawmakers act before year’s end.
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Today’s episode of Up First was edited by Megan Pratz, Kelsey Snell, Diane Webber, Mohamad ElBardicy and Alice Woelfle.
It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Lindsay Totty.
We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott. And our technical director is Carleigh Strange.
Thousands of pages of newly released emails between Jeffrey Epstein and his associates have put the convicted sex offender’s relationship with President Trump back in the spotlight.
David Enrich and Michael Gold, who have been covering the story, explain what the new documents tell us and discuss whether they could prompt the release of the rest of the Epstein files.
Guest:
David Enrich, a deputy investigations editor for The New York Times.
Michael Gold, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times.
Emails from the late Jeffrey Epstein released by congressional members show several direct references to President Donald Trump. Meanwhile, while the White House denies Trump had any knowledge of Epstein’s actions, lawmakers push through a discharge petition for more documents. And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s allies are embroiled in a corruption scandal.
Lego is one of the best-known toy brands in the world.
Known for its fun and complex building process, the small plastic bricks encourage creativity and playability, and have become a staple in most households with kids.
However, they aren’t just free-form toys for children. They have also graduated into high-end items for adults. In fact, some sets of these simple toys can now cost thousands of dollars.
Learn more about Legos and how the company started and grew on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
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In this episode, Louise Perry joins Rusty Reno on The Editor’s Desk to talk about her recent essay, “Indigenous London,” from the November 2025 issue of the magazine.
Dictatorship Across Borders: Brazil, Chile, and the South American Cold War (UNC Press, 2025) offers a groundbreaking perspective on the 1973 Chilean coup, highlighting Brazil’s pivotal role in shaping the political landscape of South America during the Cold War. Shifting the focus from the United States to interregional dynamics, Mila Burns argues that Brazil was instrumental in the overthrow of Salvador Allende and the establishment of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. Drawing on original documents, interviews, and newly accessible archives, particularly from the Brazilian Truth Commission, Burns reveals Brazil’s covert involvement in the coup, providing weapons, intelligence, and even torturers to anti-Allende forces. She also explores the resistance networks formed by Brazilian exiles in Chile. Burns’s impeccable research—combining history, anthropology, and political science—makes Dictatorship across Borders a vital addition to Cold War studies, reshaping how we understand power and resistance in South America.
The House returned on Wednesday and ended the longest shutdown in government history. House Republicans were joined by six democrats to fund the government through January 30th. Two Republicans voted against the bill. The final vote was 222-209. Earlier in the day, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released three emails from and to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that appear to indicate that President Donald Trump knew more about Epstein's activities than he had previously suggested. So for more on Epstein, Trump, and what Congress might do next, we spoke to Hailey Fuchs, a congressional reporter for Politico.
And in headlines, Planned Parenthood struggles to keep clinics open after absorbing the cost of Medicaid patients who were cut off by the Trump administration's funding ban, the Make America Healthy Again movement summit takes place in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Mint ceases the production of pennies after more than 200 years.
In this episode of Leaders of Code, Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar chats with Ramprasad Rai, VP of Platform Engineering at JPMorgan Chase & Co., about the unique challenges of implementing AI in an enterprise environment. They discuss how organizations can balance AI-driven productivity with strict compliance and security requirements by leveraging a community-driven knowledge system that grounds probabilistic AI tools in internal, trusted expertise.
The discussion also:
Explores why AI models often hallucinate in enterprise environments due to a lack of internal context.
Highlights how Stack Overflow’s structured Q&A data provides ideal fine-tuning material for the next generation of AI models.