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Trump said that Norwegian immigrants are not welcome in the United States because the Nobel committee did not give him the peace prize. House Democrats released a report containing a horrific new rape accusation against the president from a former beauty pageant contestant. The Pentagon gave SpaceX access to restricted military space tracking data. And the administration is hiding a secret court ruling about warrantless surveillance of Americans from lawmakers.
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Five people in Oslo are now apparently setting U.S. immigration policy.
Trump told a rally crowd in Michigan he does not want immigrants from Norway because the Nobel committee did not give him the peace prize. He called Norway a profane name and said he would accept immigrants from Denmark instead.
Earlier this month the committee awarded the 2026 peace prize to South Africa’s former UN human rights chief Navi Pillay for her work to ensure the prosecution of war crimes and genocide. Trump called Pillay “a woman that nobody ever heard of” and asked if the committee could give two awards.
Last year, Venezuela’s opposition leader Maria Corina Machado presented Trump with her Nobel medal at the White House in what she called recognition of his commitment to her country’s freedom. The Nobel committee later said that once the prize is awarded it cannot be given to another person.
Trump has previously described the committee’s decision not to award him the prize as “disgraceful and embarrassing” and “an indelible stain” on Norway. The Norwegian foreign minister told national broadcaster NRK on Monday that Trump knows the committee is independent and that the government has repeatedly reminded him of this.
Beatrice Keul, a former beauty pageant contestant from Switzerland, told Democratic staff on the House Judiciary Committee that Trump raped her in 1993 at his Plaza Hotel in Atlantic City after the pair spent the evening with Jeffrey Epstein. Keul described the attack as “brutal” and said Trump tore her dress and caused bleeding and bruising to multiple areas of her body.
Keul first publicly described the encounter in an October 2024 interview with the Daily Mail, saying Trump had groped her. This year, she gave the committee a fuller account, saying that Trump grabbed her from behind and raped her, then promised to get her a visa and admission to New York University.
The report notes similarities between Keul’s account and those of other accusers, including E. Jean Carroll. A jury found in May 2023 that Trump sexually abused Carroll in a department store, with the presiding judge calling her accusation “substantially true.”
Democrats said in the report the administration has illegally withheld the full Epstein files, which Congress voted to make public last fall. They also alleged Attorney General Todd Blanche may have obstructed justice during a prison visit with Ghislaine Maxwell before she was transferred to a minimum security facility.
“Controlled unclassified information” just means you have to donate first.
The Pentagon has given SpaceX exclusive access to its tracking data, according to a report from the Guardian. No other private company has ever been granted this level of access by the U.S. military.
Competitors say the deal will allow Elon Musk’s company to dominate commercial traffic control in Earth’s orbit. The access came after Musk’s DOGE fired much of the federal government’s own space traffic control staff and the administration attempted twice to gut the program’s funding.
SpaceX has some 11,000 Starlink satellites in orbit and could have as many as 20,000 in the coming years. The company uses its own “Stargaze” system for tracking objects in space, but this system can only detect objects as small as half a meter, while the military’s radar system can detect objects as small as 10 centimeters.
The tracking data is labeled “controlled unclassified information” because it comes from military radars and sensors that the Pentagon also uses to track other countries’ defense satellites. To share it with a private company risks exposing just how far those sensors can see and how accurately they can pinpoint objects in orbit.
The Trump administration illegally hid a secret ruling from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that found problems with how intelligence agencies search Americans’ communications without a warrant. The ruling came in March, and the administration’s own deadline of 180 days to release it expired on September 13.
The program in question is Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows intelligence agencies to collect Americans’ communications without a warrant. In March the court ruled the way agencies search those communications does not fit the legal limits and ordered changes, but approved another year of surveillance anyway.
The administration wants Congress to reauthorize Section 702 by the end of the year. Lawmakers are being asked to vote on the program without seeing the court’s findings about the misuse.
Twenty-three civil liberties groups, including the ACLU, have called on Congress to reject any effort to reauthorize the program so long as the administration keeps the decision secret. Signatories include liberal groups and the conservative-backed Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability.
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** Federal Judge Rules Trump Administration’s Firing of Maurene Comey Was Unlawful.** A federal judge ruled Monday that the firing of New York prosecutor Maurene Comey by the Justice Department was a violation of federal law. The judge ordered retroactive reinstatement and back pay, and rejected the DOJ’s contention that the attorney general could fire a federal prosecutor without cause. Comey had worked on federal prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Sean “Diddy” Combs before she was fired. Her lawsuit claimed that she was dismissed due to Trump’s longstanding animosity toward her father, whom Trump ousted as FBI director in 2017. The judge noted that Comey had received consistently excellent performance reviews and that the DOJ admitted she was not terminated for performance reasons.
Ramaswamy Campaign Loses Major Endorsement and Venue Hosts Over Attack Ad. Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign for Ohio governor has run into a series of problems after his attack ad featured the estranged mother of Democratic candidate Amy Acton, who lost custody of Acton when her husband was indicted for raping Acton when she was a child. The ad also prompted Ohio’s largest newspaper, The Plain Dealer, to break its policy of not endorsing in major races to back Acton. In recent days, several Ohio venues have canceled plans to host Ramaswamy, including Old Dog Ale House in Delaware and Elliot’s Wood Fired Kitchen in Newark. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who competed against Ramaswamy in the 2024 Republican presidential primary race, called him “a bad guy” and said it was a shame he kept avoiding accountability.
Minnesota City Unplugs Flock Cameras After Company Ignores Cancellation. Plymouth City Council voted to stop using its 16 permanent Flock surveillance cameras over privacy concerns in a 6-1 vote in September, sending the company a formal cancellation letter by mail and email. When Flock Safety failed to respond for more than a week, Police Chief Erik Fadden ordered staff to pull the power cords on the cameras. The city also halted sharing of its Flock data with some 36 other law enforcement agencies after the vote. Plymouth’s decision is one of a growing number of cities that are pushing back against the surveillance company. This week, San Diego canceled its $2 million Flock contract and New Bedford, Massachusetts voted 8-3 to ban the cameras entirely.
** Major Clinical Trial Confirms a Simple Liquid Can Stop Cavities Without Drilling.** A major clinical trial has found that a cheap liquid painted on teeth within seconds can halt cavities in young children without drilling or sedation. The Phase III trial, published in JAMA Pediatrics, enrolled 830 children younger than age 6 at dental clinics and Head Start programs in three states. The treatment, called silver diamine fluoride, halted decay in more than half of the baby teeth treated. The results provide the manufacturer with the clinical evidence it needs to pursue FDA approval to market the treatment specifically for the prevention of cavities. That approval could put it into pediatric medical settings, where many children are seen years before their first trip to the dentist.
