The Brief

The Justice Department released a new batch of files Tuesday related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein which contain hundreds of references to President Donald Trump.

Trump has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection to Epstein though he had a well-documented friendship with the disgraced financier in the 1980s, '90s, and 2000s. This latest tranche gives more details on Trump's relationship with Epstein, including documentation of Trump flying on Epstein's private jet in the 1990s. Epstein's relationship with powerful politicians and businessmen — and in particular, to what degree Trump may have been aware of Epstein's crimes — has been a central question as the DOJ has continued to release the files.

Congress required the Justice Department to make all files available by last Friday. The department has taken a piecemeal approach to releasing the files, which are expected to contain hundreds of thousands of pages.

In a Tuesday-morning social media post, the department said that the latest batch contains nearly 30,000 pages, adding that it includes "untrue or sensationalist claims" about Trump. When asked for comment on the newest files, the White House referred NPR to the Justice Department statement.

The latest set of files includes a 2020 email from an unidentified federal prosecutor saying that "Donald Trump traveled on Epstein's private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware)."

The prosecutor said Trump was listed as a passenger on at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996, including four on which Ghislaine Maxwell — Epstein's co-conspirator and herself a convicted sex offender — was also a passenger. The prosecutor also wrote that one flight included only Trump, Epstein, and a 20-year-old whose name was redacted.

Flight logs included in the latest files show that Trump's flights were primarily domestic, between New Jersey, Palm Beach, and Washington, D.C.

President Trump has yet to respond directly to the latest document dump, but on Monday told reporters that he thinks the Epstein files are a distraction, and that they unfairly implicate innocent people.

"What this whole thing is with Epstein is a way of trying to deflect from the tremendous success that the Republican Party has," Trump said. "A lot of people are very angry that pictures are being released of other people that really had nothing to do with Epstein, but they're in a picture with him because he was at a party. And you ruin a reputation of somebody."

The files also include a 2019 letter supposedly sent by Epstein to convicted sex offender Larry Nassar — the former U.S. gymnastics team doctor.

The letter, which says Epstein sent it from a correctional facility in Manhattan, says that "our president shares our love of young, nubile girls." A stamp on the letter says it was returned to sender.

The DOJ document release also includes an FBI document requesting that a laboratory perform a handwriting analysis to determine whether the letter was written by Epstein. It's unclear whether the FBI came to a conclusion in this case.

Another document included is a 2021 subpoena to Trump's Mar-a-Lago club for employment records during the investigation into Maxwell.

NPR's Luke Garrett contributed reporting.
Copyright 2025 NPR

The increase of federal immigration sweeps in Southern California this year made one thing clear to street vendors without authorization to be in the U.S. — running a business outside was risky.

In response, L.A. nonprofit Inclusive Action for the City ramped up an existing program that trains street vendors to work in private catering.

“One of the big successes of the year was the growth of our Hire a Vendor program, where our business coaches essentially became brokers for our street vendors and other entrepreneurs so they can get catering jobs,” said Rudy Espinoza, the group’s CEO.

The program was created in 2024 but the group expanded it this year after the increase of immigration sweeps. The group said in its annual report that 34 small businesses were trained for catering this year and more than 350 catering jobs came to those trainees this year.

The training program includes menu design and pricing, electronic sales systems and marketing

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Courtesy Inclusive Action for the City

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“Everywhere from the mayor's house to a small backyard party,” Espinoza said.

The group’s effort is part of actions taken by individuals and groups across the region to help people targeted for detention keep sources of income.

That help has included buyouts of daily inventory of fruit and flowers, as well as the awarding of grants to street vendors who lost income because they stayed home.

Advocates said the loss of income through detentions — many carried out through violent means — often affected family members who were U.S. citizens and has created a humanitarian crisis as families have lost the means to pay bills and buy food.

Street vendors in a Hire a Vendor session organized by Inclusive Action for the City.

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Courtesy Inclusive Action for the City

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The vendor training program sought to alleviate that.

“Sometimes, challenges force us to think, be creative and think about how to adapt,” Espinoza said. “The Hire a Vendor program is just an example of how some entrepreneurs really dedicated themselves to build out a different line of business for themselves.”

How it works

The Hire a Vendor program is free to people who seek and receive micro-loans from Inclusive Action for the City.

Four of the program’s nine sessions are "office hours" in which a business coach works one-on-one with the business owner.

The trainings cover:

• Catering basics such as delivery, set-up and presentation
• Invoicing and electronic sale systems
• Menu design and pricing
• Marketing through social media

The trained vendors are free to pursue their own catering jobs but also get catering work through a portal created by Inclusive Action for the City.

Espinoza said one full-time employee oversaw the program this year, and he’d like to add another full-time worker to expand the trainings in 2026.

The Trump administration will resume garnishing wages from student loan borrowers in default in early 2026, the U.S. Education Department confirmed to NPR.

The move comes after a years-long pause in wage garnishment due to the pandemic.

"We expect the first notices to be sent to approximately 1,000 defaulted borrowers the week of Jan. 7," a department spokesperson told NPR. The spokesperson said wage-garnishment notices are expected to increase on a monthly basis throughout the year.

A borrower is in default when they have not made loan payments in more than 270 days. Once that happens, the federal government can try to collect on the debt by seizing tax refunds and Social Security benefits and also by ordering an employer to withhold up to 15% of a borrower's pay. Borrowers should receive a 30-day notice from the Education Department before this wage garnishment begins.

Betsy Mayotte, the president and founder of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors, says even though borrowers have expected this, the timing is unfortunate.

"It will coincide with the increase in health care costs for many of these defaulted borrowers," she said, referring to the premium increases for Affordable Care Act health insurance that kick in in 2026. "The two will almost certainly put significant economic strain on low- and middle-income borrowers."

About 5.5 million borrowers currently are in default, according to a recent analysis of the latest federal student loan data published by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a public policy think tank.

Another 3.7 million are more than 270 days late on their payments and 2.7 million are in the early stages of delinquency.

"We've got about 12 million borrowers right now who are either delinquent on their loans or in default," Preston Cooper, who studies student loan policy at AEI, told NPR.

That's more than 1 in 4 federal student loan borrowers.

Cory Turner contributed to this story.

Copyright 2025 NPR

I remember feeling very adult the first time I sent out holiday cards with family photos on them.

But the overall cost of this sweet, but fleeting, gesture is getting hard to swallow. The cards are expensive, of course. And then there’s the price of sending them through the mail. Forever stamps now cost 78 cents. When did that happen?

I was rethinking the whole endeavor when I did a little Googling, and bingo! — I found a bunch of websites offering stamps for close to 20 cents a piece. A fraction of the price. Was this for real?

No, as it turns out. The majorly-discounted stamps advertised online are more than likely counterfeit. And if you use fake stamps, you risk your mail being confiscated or sent back.

“Typically, there is no such thing as a discounted stamp,” said Marjan Barrigan-Husted, a federal agent with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

Barrigan-Husted said “typically” because the postal service does have agreements with a select number of vendors, mostly big box stores and stamps.com, to sell stamps at a slightly discounted rate — for example, you can get a whopping 25 cents off a roll of 100 stamps from Costco.

That’s not even close to the steals I was finding online with just a little scrolling. And the stamps looked, to me, just like the latest stamps coming hot off the USPS press.

“It takes 'em about six weeks to turn around from the time the stamp is issued until it's available in the United States as a counterfeit,” said Wayne Youngblood, a writer and philatelist — an expert in stamps.

What’s behind the surge in counterfeit stamps?

Youngblood said there has been an “explosion” in counterfeit stamps in recent years, mostly coming from China. Many also come from India, Barrigan-Husted said.

Federal postal agents seized more than 4.4 million fake stamps, worth more than $3 million, just in the first quarter of this fiscal year, according to Barrigan-Husted.

Why the surge? For one thing, they are not easy to detect. “ It's very difficult to tell unless we are analyzing these stamps side-by-side in our lab with very technical equipment,” Barrigan-Husted said.

Plus, she thinks the temptation might just be too great for those on a tight income.

“The economy has been rough ever since COVID,” Barrigan-Husted said. “People with no ill intentions are thinking that they can save some money here and there by cutting costs, and one of those ways of cutting costs is to get discounted stamps.”

‘It’s like wack-a-mole’

Shutting down the websites that sell fake stamps seems like an obvious answer to the problem, or so I thought.

“ We are doing our best to shut these websites down,” Barrigan-Husted said. “But there are millions of them that just keep popping up.”

Plus, the Postal Inspection Service that Barrigan-Husted works for is a small agency, with arguably bigger fish to fry.  They also investigate child exploitation crimes, money laundering, elicit drug trafficking and other major crimes associated with the mail system.

“And so those kinds of things kind of take their priority,” Youngblood said.

What happens if you use fake stamps?

Mail fraud is a federal crime. But postal agents are more focused on suppliers of counterfeit stamps than the often unwitting consumers who buy them. But Barrigan-Husted said your mail might be confiscated and even opened if it has a fake stamp on it. Or, it could be sent back.

She said consumers should also be wary of giving their credit card information to online businesses offering stamps that are too cheap to be legit.

“ The scammers are using that information as well,” Barrigan-Husted said.

In the end, the postal service is likely the biggest victim of the illicit stamp industry — Youngblood estimates that USPS loses more than $1 billion annually when people use counterfeit stamps instead of buying the real ones.

That loss also translates to higher prices for all mail users — including the continual rise in the cost of stamps.

“ We're having to make up for all of the counterfeit stamps that have gone through the mail stream,” Barrigan-Husted said, “we still have to make up that revenue.”

For me, this all translates into an excellent excuse not to send cards this year. It’s getting late anyway. Maybe next year.