Pam Bondi to appear before House Oversight Committee to address Epstein questions
Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks with ABC News, Apr. 25, 2025. (ABC News)
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — After a tumultuous year at the Department of Justice largely defined by her controversial handling of the Epstein files, former Attorney General Pam Bondi is set to participate in a transcribed interview with the House Oversight Committee on Friday.
The second Trump cabinet official to testify behind closed doors as part of the Oversight Committee’s yearlong Epstein probe, Bondi is expected to face questions about reneging on her promise to publicly release the DOJ’s files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which ultimately prompted Congress to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act forcing the release of millions of documents.
Trump removed Bondi as attorney general in April after sources said he grew frustrated with her handling of the Epstein files and the unsuccessful prosecutions of his perceived political opponents.
“Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year,” Trump wrote on social media announcing her departure. “We love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future.”
Earlier this week, Axios reported that Trump had appointed Bondi to serve on an advisory panel on AI policy, tasked with coordinating cooperation between the government and tech leaders.
In an unusual arrangement, a DOJ spokesperson said that Bondi will be accompanied during Friday’s transcribed interview by Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon and other DOJ personnel, in order to “assist the Committee in understanding the Department’s role in implementing and complying with the Epstein Files Transparency Act during her tenure.”
“Because former Attorney General Bondi oversaw the Department at the time the Act was enacted and carried out, DOJ’s presence is solely to ensure accurate representation of Department processes, facilitate any necessary clarifications, and support a complete factual record for the Committee,” a DOJ spokesperson said in a statement earlier this week.
The DOJ originally sought to have Bondi avoid appearing by arguing that the subpoena the committee issued “no longer obligates her to appear” since she left the role of attorney general. Bondi ultimately agreed to testify voluntarily after the top Democrat on the committee introduced a resolution to hold her in contempt for failing to appear.
Shortly after beginning her tenure as attorney general last year, Bondi faced immediate pressure from Trump’s MAGA followers and others to begin releasing the DOJ’s files from its investigations of Epstein and his associates. Speaking to Fox News in February 2025, Bondi said Epstein’s client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review” and said the release of the files was a “directive by President Trump.”
However, when the DOJ released the “first phase” of the Epstein files that month — inviting, with great fanfare, conservative influencers to receive the files — it was determined that nearly every document released was already public. By July, the Department of Justice and FBI said in a joint memo that no further documents would be released, citing victim privacy and the assertion that the documents warranted no further investigations — a decision that sparked backlash from much of the MAGA base.
“To that end, while we have labored to provide the public with maximum information regarding Epstein and ensured examination of any evidence in the government’s possession, it is the determination of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation that no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted,” the memo said.
Bondi later defended her statement about Epstein’s client list by clarifying she was referring to the Epstein files generally along with other files released by the Trump administration, including documents related to JFK and MLK Jr. The DOJ/FBI memo also said that their review of the files “revealed no incriminating ‘client list'” and no evidence that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals.
Despite the memo stating that no further investigation was warranted, Trump in November ordered Bondi to investigate Epstein’s ties to Bill Clinton and other prominent Democrats. At the time, Bondi said the DOJ would “pursue this with urgency and integrity” and assigned the matter to the U.S. attorney in Manhattan.
The Justice Department’s subsequent release of Epstein files following the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act prompted bipartisan criticism when the DOJ improperly redacted files — both exposing victim identities while concealing other information — and declined to release millions of additional files by claiming they were duplicative, privileged or contained sensitive victim information.
Bondi’s deputy and successor, now-acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, acknowledged the release of sensitive victim information was “horrible” and “inexcusable.”
He said the DOJ is finished investigating Epstein.
“And so I think that to the extent that the Epstein files was a part of the past year of this Justice Department, it should not be a part of anything going forward,” Blanche said in April.
Signage outside the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, US, on Monday, March 3, 2025. (Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — This year’s Atlantic hurricane season will see below average tropical activity, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The decreased storm activity is driven by El Niño, which is forecast to emerge soon and persist through the season, the agency announced on Thursday.
Atlantic hurricane season starts on June 1 and continues through November 30.
There is currently a 55% chance that this year’s season will be below average, according to NOAA, with eight to 14 named storms, tropical storms and stronger expected for the season.
Three to six hurricanes could occur, of which one to three could major storms with Category 3 intensity or stronger, NOAA said.
NOAA’s hurricane outlooks predict overall seasonal activity, though levels of activity can vary throughout the six-month season. It does not predict how many storms will make landfall or specific locations where landfalls might occur.
An average Atlantic hurricane season has 14 named storms, seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes, according to NOAA.
The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season brought 13 named storms, just below the long-term seasonal average
While there were no landfalling hurricanes in the United States last year for the first time in a decade, the season still proved to be consequential, producing three Category 5 hurricanes, including Melissa, which devastated Jamaica.
High temperatures for Monday, May 4, 2026. (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — Millions of people across the country are buckling up for wild temperature swings of up to 30 degrees this week.
The roller-coaster-like dips and highs in temperatures across most of the nation will come amid a late-season snowstorm in Denver and Rocky Mountains. An Illinois dust storm threat could reduce visibility to less than a quarter of a mile.
Whiplash temperature swings
On Monday, temperatures will be above average across much of the Midwest and Northwest, and below average in California and southwest Arizona.
Temperatures are expected to climb to 80 on Monday from Chicago to Kansas City — making it 10 to 15 degrees above average for this time of year.
Oklahoma City and Dallas are forecast to be in the mid-80s on Monday. Meanwhile, California’s Bay Area and Los Angeles are expected to be in the mid-60s on Monday — 5 to 10 degrees below average for the first week of May.
But on Tuesday, temperatures are expected to dramatically drop across parts of the Midwest, including Chicago, which is forecast to see a 20-degree decline, and Denver with a 30-degree decline.
Severe storms are also possible on Tuesday from Dallas to Jonesboro, Arkansas, with the main threats expected to be large hail, damaging wind and possible isolated tornadoes. On Wednesday, severe weather moves across east Texas and into central Alabama, bringing damaging wind, large hail, possible tornadoes and the risk of flash flooding.
New York City, Washington, D.C., and Raleigh, North Carolina, are expected to top 80 degrees on Tuesday — which is 5 to 15 degrees above average for this time of the year.
On Wednesday, a rush of cold air is expected to bring widespread below-average temperatures across the Midwest and Great Lakes.
By Friday, cooler-than-normal temperatures spread across the East and South, while the West goes above average with highs near 100 for Phoenix and Las Vegas, while only reaching the 60s in New York City and Washington, D.C., and the 50s in Boston.
Snow in Colorado
The Colorado Rocky Mountains have received a record-low snowpack this winter. But a late-season snowstorm expected in the area beginning Monday and running through Wednesday could bring a foot to 2 feet of much-needed snow to the Rockies.
Winter storm alerts are in place for parts of Colorado and Wyoming through Wednesday. The heaviest snow is forecast to fall on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The Denver metro area could see 3 to 9 inches of snow on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The pending storm is already making an impact on America’s favorite summer pastime — baseball. The start time of Monday’s game in Denver between the New York Mets and the Colorado Rockies has been moved up three hours to 3:40 p.m. MT due to potential snow.
Blowing dust in Illinois
A rare blowing dust advisory has been issued in Illinois, including the Chicago area. Blowing dust was already an issue in Central Illinois on Sunday.
Visibility of less than a quarter mile is possible on Monday in some agricultural areas of the region.
It’s only the second time in history that the National Weather Service (NWS) office based in Chicago has issued a blowing dust advisory. The first advisory was on May 16, 2025, when a large dust storm caused visibility to drop to near zero and wind gusts rose to 60 mph in Chicago and across the area, according to the NWS.
Tucker Carlson, former FOX News host and current host of The Tucker Carlson Show, attends a meeting with oil executives in the East Room of the White House on January 9, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Al Drago/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — President Donald Trump’s decision to carry out strikes on Iran has further exposed a fracture among some of the president’s fiercest supporters inside MAGA world — one that many supporters say will only widen with every week the conflict continues.
Since the first strike last week, Trump’s actions in Iran have faced stark criticism from some of the most popular voices in MAGA media who helped boost his 2024 campaign, ranging from longtime adviser Steve Bannon to more recent converts like conservative media personalities Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly.
Watch special coverage on Nightline, “War with Iran,” each night on ABC and streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.
Prominent figures within the movement say the strikes have already tested the limits of their support, according to interviews with over a dozen leading voices inside President Trump’s MAGA coalition, who point to shifting justifications, no clear endgame, the specter of another Middle East forever war, and the use of American resources overseas versus at home as concerns that they warn will only deepen and carry a steeper political price the longer the operation lasts.
“He has a maximum of a month,” Natalie Winters, White House correspondent for Bannon’s War Room program, told ABC News. “After that people will start viewing this as just another dragged-out conflict.”
Since the strikes last week, the president and Trump officials have offered a creeping timeline for how long the operation in Iran could last, with Trump initially stating the operation was “ahead of schedule” and that the war could last “four weeks — or less.”
But in recent days the administration has signaled the potential for a much longer conflict, with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth stating this week that the operation had “only just begun.”
“We have only just begun to fight and fight decisively,” Hegseth told reporters. “Iran is hoping that we cannot sustain this, which is a really bad miscalculation.”
On Wednesday, Hegseth said the war could go as long as eight weeks or beyond, the longest timeline the Trump administration has offered thus far.
For a base filled with influential — and loud — voices who say they supported the president in large part because of his promise to avoid not just foreign intervention but “forever wars,” the administration’s shifting timeline has become a ticking clock.
‘They tell us it’s regime change’ Winters, one of the young rising stars on the MAGA right, has hundreds of thousands of followers on social media and has become a prominent voice on Bannon’s War Room, where she filled in as a guest host while Bannon was serving time in prison for refusing to testify before the Jan. 6 Congressional committee.
She joined the movement at 18, and while she covers the Trump administration for a pro-Trump outlet, she has not been shy about criticizing the administration on issues like the Epstein files and foreign military action.
Winters said her main issue with the war in Iran is that nobody can explain the goal.
“They tell us it’s regime change, but not regime change. It’s a war, but it’s not a war. But we can’t rule out boots on the ground. And if it we want it to be a forever war, it can be a forever war, but it’s not a forever war,” Winter said. “There have been no publicly made comments in the last four days to give me any comfort that this is not going to turn into [a forever war].”
Curt Mills, the executive director of The American Conservative, told ABC News that the longer the operation drags on, the worse it will be for the president’s standing with his supporters.
“It all depends on how long the war goes. I think you are going to see this start eating into Trump’s approval rating, beyond his core MAGA supporters. And that’s the difference between Sen. John Cornyn and Sen. James Talarico,” Mills said, referencing the war’s potential impact on critical Senate midterm races like the one in Texas, where the Republican primary between Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is now headed for a runoff.
The impact the war could have on the midterms appears to be one of the unifying concerns among influential voices on the right, who worry about the coalition of supporters that swept Trump into power in 2024. Jack Posobiec, a popular MAGA commentator and Turning Point Action official, told ABC News the president’s victory was built in part on two distinct groups: the traditional Republican base and a newer wave of younger, low-propensity voters who had never engaged in politics before, which includes the podcast and sports fan crowd that the campaign worked to bring into the fold ahead of November.
It is that second group, Posobiec warned, where the Iran strikes are landing hardest — making what is emerging inside MAGA also a generational fault line.
“For the younger end of the spectrum inside MAGA, foreign intervention is just off the radar. It’s not something they want to see because they see it as prioritizing foreign interests over populist interests,” Posobiec said. “They want to see economic relief as No. 1. They’re interested in Epstein, arrests, deportations — but anything to do with foreign intervention is just off the radar for them. When you get to say [age] 40, 45, you see the split in the other direction, where you do see more support for the president’s actions.”
Posobiec also said the divide comes down to younger voters fearful of a repeat of the interventionist wars of the George W. Bush era.
“There’s this huge shadow cast over anything to do with military intervention because of the Bush years. People just have massive indigestion over that. I’m a veteran myself and I totally understand,” he said. “Donald Trump is not George W. Bush. JD Vance is not Dick Cheney. You got to give them some credit for that.”
Backlash to the backlash
The dissent has not gone unanswered. Even as the criticism has grown, a counter-offensive of sorts has taken shape inside MAGA world, with other prominent voices pushing back against those speaking out.
Perhaps no voice within MAGA has defended the president and the Iran strikes more aggressively than Laura Loomer, the far-right activist who, while having her own history of criticizing the administration, has become the movement’s most visible counterweight to the growing dissent.
“A lot of these people are not even Trump supporters. They build up audiences lying to people, pretending like they’re conservative,” Loomer told ABC News when asked about the backlash to Iran.
Loomer, on X, has lavished praise on the operation in Iran, and has launched attacks at MAGA voices who have been critical. “I love President Trump. I would take anyone to the floor for the United States and for Donald J. Trump. I am always eager to throw down on anyone who works to undermine his plan to restore our country to greatness,” Loomer wrote.
In the days following the initial strikes, the president called Loomer personally, telling her he had spent the day on the phone with world leaders and generals but wanted to reach out to thank her for her support, according to Loomer.
“I said, ‘Congratulations! You’re a hero to the Iranian people, you’re a hero to the American people,'” Loomer told ABC News.
Loomer, who has emerged as one of the most influential pro-Trump voices, said the president also asked her how the Iran strikes were going over with his supporters. “What are people saying about it? I believe there’s overwhelming support for this,” she said Trump asked.
Loomer agreed with the president but told him there were “some people who aren’t happy about it, but they’re the general misfits,” specifically referring to Tucker Carlson, who had earlier that day told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl that the strikes were “absolutely disgusting and evil.”
“I asked him, ‘Are you aware of this? Tucker keeps going online about you and he called you disgusting and evil today,'” Loomer said.
Loomer said she was surprised to learn that at that time Trump was still not aware of the critical comments Carlson had been making, many of which she had been highlighting on her X account.
“He didn’t know any of the stuff,” Loomer said. “And so he asked me to send it over.”
Loomer said she then sent over information about what Carlson, and also Megyn Kelly, had been saying about the president. Later that day, Trump said in an interview that “MAGA’s not the other two,” referring to Carlson and Kelly.
Days later, Trump told ABC Jonathan Karl, “Tucker has lost his way” and that he “knew that a long time ago, and he’s not MAGA. MAGA is saving our country. MAGA is making our country great again. MAGA is America first, and Tucker is none of those things. And Tucker is really not smart enough to understand that.”
In the aftermath of the back and forth between Trump and Carlson, Loomer wrote on X, “Loomered,” taking credit for the blowback on Carlson.
Other prominent MAGA voices are now seeking to discredit the idea that any meaningful divide exists at all — creating a fight within the movement over whether there is a fight within the movement.
“This is all b——-, doomer, black pilled, liberal media b——- designed to fracture you before an election, to drive down approval ratings and voter enthusiasm, so Republicans lose and Donald Trump can get impeached,” podcaster and former FBI deputy director Dan Bongino said on his show this week. “That is all this is.”
Some have dismissed the concerns as little more than the voices of a handful of dissenting podcasters — but others reject that characterization.
“I think it’s nonsense,” Mills, another longtime leading voice in the MAGA movement, told ABC News. “Say what you will, if you even took the extreme cynical view of Carlson, Bannon, Kelly — they’re businessmen. And they wouldn’t be doing this if there wasn’t a large audience for the message.”
“It’s demoralization at the margins that I’m worried about. It doesn’t tell us anything to say 80% of Republican voters support the Iran thing. You’re not fighting for the median Republican voter,” Mills said. “You lose 50,000 people who just don’t show up — you lose Georgia. Can they afford to lose point 5% of the vote? I don’t think so.”
‘Foundational to MAGA’ But there are some on the right who have actually been surprised the blowback hasn’t been louder. Earlier this week, Winters spoke out for the first time regarding the Iran strikes during an appearance on Bannon’s War Room, delivering what she believed to be measured criticism of the administration’s efforts and saying, “I’m as MAGA as it gets. We love Trump, but it’s fair to ask for clarity.”
“If this turns into another dragged out kinetic conflict, that’s not what we voted for,” Winters said.
Winters said she was shocked by the immediate backlash she faced online for her comments. “The comments were pretty rough. Which is wild, my commentary was pretty measured,” she said, adding that she had also been “smeared as a MAGA sycophant and cultist. It’s very frustrating. I could not have been more measured. I literally read the administration’s quotes.”
Given the gravity of the issue, Winters said she has been surprised that the outcry from the base hasn’t been even more forceful.
“The debate over the Epstein files created more political blowback on the administration than what they’re doing in Iran, standing on the brink of a potential forever war,” she said.
“And seeing the base not more outrageous about that — it’s pretty wild, because that’s a tenant that’s foundational to MAGA.”
