By EMMA RICHTER, US SENIOR NEWS REPORTER

Published: 16:11 EST, 17 December 2025 | Updated: 16:22 EST, 17 December 2025

Ghislaine Maxwell has formally asked a federal court to throw out her sex trafficking conviction, just 48 hours before the latest Epstein files are expected to be published.

Jeffrey Epstein’s madame, who is serving 20 years for her role in recruiting and trafficking minors for sex for him, filed a habeas petition which claims ‘substantial new evidence has emerged’ showing that she did not receive a fair trial, according to the filing reviewed by ABC News. 

Maxwell, who submitted the last-minute court filing without an attorney, wrote: ‘This newly available evidence — derived from litigation against the Federal Bureau of Investigation, various financial institutions, and the Estate of Jeffrey Epstein, as well as from sworn depositions, released records, and other verified sources — shows that exculpatory information was withheld, false testimony presented, and material facts misrepresented to the jury and the Court.’

The disgraced socialite’s last-ditch effort comes after she’s exhausted all of her direct legal appeals, and just two days before the next set of Epstein files are set to be released. 

Files started to become unsealed after the Epstein Files Transparency Act was passed by the House on November 18. It was then passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Donald Trump. 

The law has some exemptions tied to it, including allowing Attorney General Pam Bondi to withhold certain records if their publication could interfere with an active prosecutions or criminal investigations. 

This is a breaking news story. 

Ghislaine Maxwell attends a party in 2011

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Ghislaine Maxwell asks court to throw out her sex trafficking conviction just days before new Epstein drop

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Oscar winner Dame Judi Dench goes on a festive journey into her family history to discover whether one of her ancestors ever crossed paths with her hero, William Shakespeare.

The show airs on Channel 4 on the 27th of December(Image: Channel 4)

Oscar winner Dame Judi Dench will be turning detective this Christmas in a mission to discover if one of her ancestors met her hero William Shakespeare.

In Channel 4 documentary, Shakespeare, My Family and Me – airing on Boxing Day – she searches Danish archives to see if her eight times great grandfather met the bard in 1606.

Laughing out loud, she recalls her own colourful mishaps down the years acting in Shakespeare’s most famous plays.

She says: “I remember when I played Portia in The Merchant of Venice at Stratford-upon-Avon with my husband Michael [Williams], I got one of the words wrong in the script and ended up saying ‘erection’.

“We had a wind band about to play on stage with us and they left as they were embarrassed. It was exquisite agony. I was surprised I did not get the sack afterwards.

“Also, my wig flew off one night when I was in Twelfth Night. It was a very dark wig with a head-dress attached and it just went flying.”

Dame Judi hopes she will find a family connection to William Shakespare(Image: Channel 4)READ MORE: ‘I know the pain of losing my daughter through extreme violence’ says campaigning mumREAD MORE: ‘I can feel my baby kick when my pregnant partner’s not here thanks to a simple device’

Now 91, she has acted alongside a gallery of stars and fondly recalls playing Cleopatra to Sir Anthony Hopkins’ Mark Anthony.

“I absolutely adored it,” she says. “Every night I used to haul Tony up and he used to die in my lap, as he was playing Mark Anthony. After he died on stage he used to whisper to me ‘Now, I am going for a nice cup of tea’ and that would be the whole of act five.

“I love Shakespeare, but I have fallen over in nearly every play I have done.It is something to do with my balance.

“And I have had bad reviews. Once when I played Juliet in Romeo & Juliet one critic wrote ‘she conveyed about as much as an apple in a Warwickshire orchard’.”

But, since she first stepped on stage at The Old Vic in 1957 in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the multi-award winning actress has more than redeemed herself.Most famous with younger audiences as MI6 boss M in seven James Bond films, she says with thespians of her generation the edict was “the show must always go on.”

She says: “When I started at the Oxford Playhouse, you did more than one role at a time.

Dame Judi has been acting for years

“We would do a night at Stratford and there was this taxi driver and he used to drive me to London. There was no motorway then, it was like the A34 or whatever it was and we used to think nothing of it. It was exciting just to be working.”

Dame Judi says there was never a question of pulling out of a performance.“You can’t say ‘I don’t feel like it today’. You can’t do that,” she says.

“I remember when there was the Asian flu in the 1950s. I remember coming on as Ophelia in Hamlet and I cried the whole way through the scene, but I got through it.”

Passionate about theatre, she continues: “There are very few plays I have done that I have not enjoyed.”

“Theatre is my passion. It is a learning curve, but the learning starts with the audience.

“When we do a comedy and we don’t get the laughs that is when we know something is wrong and that is why living theatre is important. It is vital to life.”

But her most famous comedy role was undoubtedly in the TV series A Fine Romance, opposite her husband Michael Williams.She recalls a funny moment off-set, saying: “Once coming down Shaftesbury Avene we had a row in the car. I was looking one way and Michael was looking the other, then this woman came up to the car window singing A Fine Romance!”

Since loosing her eyesight she has found other ways to learn her script

Sadly, her failing eyesight due to the condition macular degeneration, means she is less likely to watch live performances these days.

She says: “When I go the theatre I can’t see. Hopeless.

“I have lost my eyesight now, so I can’t read now. I have to learn [a script] by somebody teaching it to me another way. I can’t see and I can’t read a book.”

But Dame Judi looks back on her career and the talented people she has worked with extremely fondly.

She says: “I wanted to be a designer when I started out. That is what I fancied being. I went to York Art School and my parents took me to see Michael Redgrave in King Lear at Stratford-upon-Avon and the set was simply sublime.

“There was an enormous circle that went round with a big rock in the middle. There was a throne and a cave and I thought, ‘this is what design should be and I don’t have the facility for it.’”

Realising she wouldn’t make it as a designer, she decided to follow her brother into acting.

She says: “My father was a doctor and there was no television then and my mother was wonderful at playing the piano. I did get to Central School of Speech and Drama and I went straight to the Old Vic and that was my training ground.

The documentary will air on the 27th of December(Image: Getty Images Europe)

“My first role at The Old Vic was Ophelia. I learnt a lot and they kept me on.”

Like her millions of fans, Dame Judi will be enjoying festive TV over Christmas, although she has a very critical companion in her pet parrot Sweetheart – a gift from her partner, conservationist David Mills.

She says: “We watch television sometimes and the parrot suddenly goes ‘You noisy cow’. Not at me, but to the television!.

“It is a spectacular parrot, an African grey which David gave me for Christmas.”

Sweetheart belonged to a man living in Maidstone for 14 years, and Dame Judi continues: “She is called Sweetheart and is a female but talks like a man. She travels between David and me.”

Dame Judi will also mark the passing of friends she has last over the Christmas period, by spending time in the garden of her Surrey home, where she has planted memorial trees in their honour.

Like her millions of fans, Dame Judi will be enjoying festive TV over Christmas, (Image: Harry Truman)

She also has a very unusual statue of Queen Victoria. She explains: “The statue was given to me. It is higher than me. I can’t possibly reach it. After we did the movie Victoria and Abdul we were in India and there was an enormous statue of Queen Victoria and it is made of papier mache.

“After the film they said ‘do you want that statue?’ And I said no’ but then I said ‘oh, just a minute.’ She is in my garden, where she stands with an orb and sceptre and the birds like her a lot. She is quite hidden, but I know she is there.

“I plant trees for all my friends who have died and there was a beautiful designer on that film who I was fond of and was very, very clever. He died startlingly young, so beside Queen Victoria I have a tree for him. So he is there as well. It is a very very nice thing to have.”

*Dame Judi Dench’s documentary, Shakespeare: My Family and Me airs on Channel 4 on Saturday, December 27 at 9pm.

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The Finnish prime minister has apologised to Asian nations amid a growing controversy over the “slanted eyes” scandal which saw members of parliament post derogatory images.

The controversy started earlier this month when the Miss Finland title holder, Sarah Dzafce, was pictured pulling back her eyes in her friend’s social media post captioned: “Eating with a Chinese person”.

Dzafce, who is not of Asian origin, said she did not intend to offend anyone and apologised.

But the 22-year-old was nonetheless stripped of the title she had only won in September.

Finns Party MPs Kaisa Garedew and Juho Eerola reacted by posting similar pictures of themselves, Finland’s public broadcaster, Yle, reported, as did Finns Party MEP Sebastian Tynkkynen.

Mr Eerola has since apologised for his post.

Dubbed the “slanted eyes” scandal by Finnish media, the incident is the latest in a series of cases in which members of
the Finns Party, a junior partner in the governing coalition, have been accused of posting or making racist remarks.

Prime Minister Petteri Orpo of the pro-business National Coalition Party, who leads a four-party coalition that includes
the Finns, issued a statement offering his sincere apologies on Wednesday.

“These posts do not reflect Finland’s values of equality and inclusion,” Mr Orpo said in statements released by Finnish
embassies in China, Japan and South Korea.

“Our message in Finland and to all our friends abroad is that the government takes racism seriously and is committed to
combating the issue,” he said.

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The Miss Finland organisation, in a statement to Reuters, said it was apolitical but had acted in accordance with its values and principles.

Already shortly after taking office in 2023, Mr Orpo’s government faced a no-confidence vote over racist online posts and statements made by several cabinet members from the Finns Party.

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Nick Reiner, accused of killing his father Rob and mother Michelle in their Los Angeles home, made his first court appearance on Wednesday. His lawyer asked the public to not “rush to judgement” before all the details are revealed.

Published On 17 Dec 202517 Dec 2025

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Home affairs minister says he has ‘full confidence’ in Australia’s intelligence agency

Sarah Basford Canales

Tony Burke maintains he has “full confidence” in Australia’s domestic intelligence agency as questions are raised about how the father and son duo allegedly behind the Bondi attack, and inspired by Islamic State, were able to travel to the Philippines last month without raising flags.

The home affairs minister said he had reviewed the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation’s (Asio) decisions and actions regarding 24-year-old Naveed Akram – who was charged with 59 offences including 15 counts of murder on Wednesday – since he first came to attention in October 2019 for alleged associations with individuals involved in a reported Islamic State cell.

“I’ve gone through the different decisions that have been taken in this respect, and I have confidence of the decisions that [were] made,” Burke told ABC’s 7.30 on Wednesday.

“Obviously, they are not all decisions that were made during the life of this particular government, but I’m not playing political games with any of this. And no matter who was in office at different times, I have confidence in the way decisions were taken.”

Authorities in the Philippines confirmed on Tuesday that Akram and his 50-year-old father, Sajid, who was shot dead by police on Sunday, travelled to the south-east Asian country between 1 November and 28 November. They listed Davao, in the country’s south, as their final destination in the Philippines.

Davao is the capital of the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. The island’s more remote regions, west of Davao, have been a centre of resistance for the country’s pro-Islamic State and Islamist militant groups.

Burke said he could not publicly reveal whether Asio continued to monitor Akram after the six-month examination six years ago, or whether the duo’s trip to the Philippines in November triggered a movement alert list.

“I can just answer it in the general, that is, the movement alert list is very vast, and when people come to our attention, they generally stay there for a very, very long time,” he said.

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Updated at 21.18 CET

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Anthony Albanese says courage and decency of Australians can overcome ‘pure evil’

Kelly Burke

Anthony Albanese is yet to respond directly to Benjamin Netanyahu’s latest criticism of his handling of the Bondi terror attacks but he called for for unity when he addressed a multifaith memorial service at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney last night

In his speech he said everyone would join in grieving with those who lost loved ones in the attack which he again called an act of “pure evil” and praised the bystanders whose bravery in helping the victims for acts which showed the “best of Australia”.

Tonight, as we gather in one iconic Sydney location, we mourn the devastation inflicted at another. At this cathedral dedicated to our Catholic faith, we grieve for all those who were killed affirming their faith, Jewish Australians deliberately targeted on the first night of Hanukah, as they came together at that beautiful place to renew their hope, their resilience, their belief in the power of light, the darkness of terror and antisemitism was passed upon them.

Our prayers this evening are for the souls of the innocent people whose lives were so cruelly and violently stolen away at Bondi beach that Sunday evening. We pray with those who we knew and loved, including, I know, the family of Rabbi Eli who was farewelled today, everyone who has lost the centre of their universe, the love of their life, their pride and joy, we grieve for the light and laughter and strength and comfort that so many have lost. We grieve with everyone who would have shared in their happiness.

We pray that those being treated for their injuries recover, we reflect with gratitude on the bravery and skill of the police and first responders who saved lives, and we offer our thanks for the courage and selflessness of everyday Australians; people who, in a moment of deadly danger, did not hesitate to run to the aid of strangers, to shield, shelter or comfort people fleeing in fear.

Ordinary people demonstrating extraordinary courage, including the remarkable actions of Ahmed al-Ahmed, who put himself in the line of fire, wrestling a gun away from one of the shooters. People he has never met owe him their lives.

We pray for the souls of Boris and Sophia Burman and Reuven Morrison, murdered while bravely protecting others. Our nation owes them and all the heroes of Bondi a profound debt of gratitude, not just for their bravery, but also for their example, for reminding us that at the worst of times, we see the best of the Australian character.

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NSW Health says 17 patients injured in the Bondi attack remain in hospitals across Sydney.

We’re expecting updated numbers later today.

As of 7.30pm on yesterday, the numbers were:

• One patient is in a critical condition

• Four patients are in critical but stable conditions

• 12 patients are in stable conditions

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Updated at 21.09 CET

Morning, everyone. I’m Adeshola Ore and I will be bringing you live updates on the Bondi terror attack.

I’m chasing the latest patient numbers and we’re expecting the funeral for the attack’s youngest victim, 10-year-old Matilda, to be held today.

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Updated at 21.09 CET

Netanyahu renews attack on Albanese government

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has renewed his attack on the Albanese government’s alleged failure to curb antisemitism in the lead-up to the Bondi terror attack.

In the immediate aftermath of Sunday’s massacre, Netanyahu said Anthony Albanese was to blame for the attack because his government’s decision to recognise the Palestinian state had encouraged Islamist extremism and attacks on Jewish targets in Australia.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Photograph: Abir Sultan/EPA

Albanese rejected the accusations.

In a new post overnight, Netanyahu said he had spoken to Rabbi Yehoram Ulman, the father-in-law of Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who was killed in the attack, and with the chairman of the Israel-Australia Jewish Council, Alex Ostrovsky, who was wounded in the attack and has been discharged from hospital. He said he expressed his condolences and told them (in Hebrew, which X translated):

… that these heinous acts are a direct result of rampant antisemitism, which is fuelled by a flaccid policy of the authorities in the country and of the Australian government, which has a duty to act immediately and with all the tools at its disposal to eradicate terrorism and restore security to the Jewish communities.

I emphasised that the State of Israel stands alongside the Jewish community in Australia, and I strengthened the Chabad emissaries and all the Jews of Australia – those who stand firm, clinging to great faith and immense spirit in the face of those who seek our harm.

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Updated at 21.09 CET

Sarah Basford Canales

Tony Burke asked if moving Asio and AFP to attorney general’s department hampered intelligence

Burke was also asked whether the Albanese government’s decision in 2022 to move Asio and the Australian federal police from the home affairs department to the attorney general’s department – a decision reversed this year – had hampered intelligence.

The minister said it was his decision to return the agencies to home affairs to assist with “seamless” information-sharing.

Burke added they both had enough resources to monitor both politically motivated and religiously motivated extremism: “I’ve confirmed with the Australian federal police and with Asio again in the last 24 hours that they both have more resources than they have ever had, and believe they get a fair hearing whenever they put a resources case to government.”

Asio’s director general, Mike Burgess, drew comparisons between Islamist political group Hizb ut-Tahrir and the neo-Nazi group the National Socialist Network, warning their “anti-Israel rhetoric is fuelling and normalising wider antisemitic narratives”.

“The organisation’s condemnation of Israel and Jews attracts media attention and aids recruitment but it deliberately stops short of promoting onshore acts of politically motivated violence,” Burgess said.

The UK banned Hizb ut-Tahrir from recruiting or holding protests and meetings in 2024, joining countries such as Germany and Indonesia.

Burke said he would list the group once it met the threshold, which he said it had yet to.

“My view for a very long time has been, and as soon as I came into home affairs, I asked again. I’ve continued to ask, ‘do they meet the legal threshold?’ Because the moment they meet a legal threshold, I see them causing nothing but harm in the community,” he said.

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Updated at 21.07 CET

Home affairs minister says he has ‘full confidence’ in Australia’s intelligence agency

Sarah Basford Canales

Tony Burke maintains he has “full confidence” in Australia’s domestic intelligence agency as questions are raised about how the father and son duo allegedly behind the Bondi attack, and inspired by Islamic State, were able to travel to the Philippines last month without raising flags.

The home affairs minister said he had reviewed the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation’s (Asio) decisions and actions regarding 24-year-old Naveed Akram – who was charged with 59 offences including 15 counts of murder on Wednesday – since he first came to attention in October 2019 for alleged associations with individuals involved in a reported Islamic State cell.

“I’ve gone through the different decisions that have been taken in this respect, and I have confidence of the decisions that [were] made,” Burke told ABC’s 7.30 on Wednesday.

“Obviously, they are not all decisions that were made during the life of this particular government, but I’m not playing political games with any of this. And no matter who was in office at different times, I have confidence in the way decisions were taken.”

Authorities in the Philippines confirmed on Tuesday that Akram and his 50-year-old father, Sajid, who was shot dead by police on Sunday, travelled to the south-east Asian country between 1 November and 28 November. They listed Davao, in the country’s south, as their final destination in the Philippines.

Davao is the capital of the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. The island’s more remote regions, west of Davao, have been a centre of resistance for the country’s pro-Islamic State and Islamist militant groups.

Burke said he could not publicly reveal whether Asio continued to monitor Akram after the six-month examination six years ago, or whether the duo’s trip to the Philippines in November triggered a movement alert list.

“I can just answer it in the general, that is, the movement alert list is very vast, and when people come to our attention, they generally stay there for a very, very long time,” he said.

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Updated at 21.18 CET

Welcome

Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the top overnight stories before our morning blogger takes the reins.

The home affairs minister, Tony Burke, insists he has “full confidence” in Asio and its decisions despite the intelligence agency apparently missing the rising threat posed by the alleged Bondi gunmen. More on that soon.

Last night the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, called for unity at a multifaith event in Sydney, after a day in which he faced intense criticism over his response to antisemitism in Australia.

And Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has added fuel to that criticism with another attack on the Australian government overnight. We bring you more on this, too, in a few minutes.

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The Academy Awards will begin streaming exclusively on YouTube in 2029, the latest big change in Hollywood.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made the announcement on Wednesday, saying that it signed a multi-year deal that will give YouTube the exclusive global rights to the Oscars until 2033.

The Oscars, which is planned for 15 March, has aired for a half a century on ABC. Starting in 2029, the show will be available live and for free on YouTube.

It’s another big shakeup in Hollywood, which is dealing with studio sales and mergers, along with steep production cuts.

“The Academy is an international organization, and this partnership will allow us to expand access to the work of the Academy to the largest worldwide audience possible – which will be beneficial for our Academy members and the film community,” Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy President Lynette Howell Taylor said in a statement.

Over decades, viewership of the awards show has declined, though there was a slight uptick in 2025, with a significant number of younger viewers tuning in from cell phones and computers.

In a statement, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan called the Oscars “one of our essential cultural institutions” and said that partnering with the Academy would “inspire a new generation of creativity and film lovers while staying true to the Oscars’ storied legacy”.

ABC, which has streamed the awards since 1976, said that it was looking forward “to the next three telecasts” it will still host.

The move comes as Warner Bros Discovery on Wednesday recommended its shareholders reject a hostile takeover bid from Paramount Skydance for a rival bid from streaming giant Netflix.

Both options were seen as unfavourable for an industry that has seen drastic cuts over the past several years. Like major studios, cable networks have faced issues as the public has opted for streaming services instead.

YouTube winning rights to the Academy Awards further suggests that reliance on streaming sites will continue.

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Warner Bros. Discovery recommended on Wednesday that its shareholders reject Paramount’s offer to buy the company and instead accept Netflix’s offer.

According to Warner Bros., a Netflix takeover would better serve both the company’s interests and its audiences.

In a letter to its shareholders, Warner Bros. called Paramount’s offer “inferior,” also adding it included “significant risks and costs” due to its reliance on borrowed funds.

However, Netflix’s offer is backed by a streaming giant worth more than $400 billion (€340 billion).

“We are confident that our merger with Netflix represents superior, more certain value for our shareholders,” Warner Bros. said.

Warner Bros. agreed to Netflix’s 72-billion-dollar offer, which includes both cash and stocks, so that the latter would purchase its movie studios, as well as HBO’s catalogue.

Paramount’s offer was labeled “inferior” by the Warner Bros. board [FILE: October 2025]Image: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Separating cable channels from company

The Warner Bros. shareholders will have until January 8 to respond to the offer, with the company’s board also voicing its worries about foreign investors being involved.

Whichever offer that ends up being accepted is set to be subjected to scrutiny by the authorities in the US. Paramount argued its offer is more likely to have an easier path to the authorities’ approval.

Warner Bros. will have to sell its cable TV assets, which include news outlet CNN and science channel Discovery, which would have to be completed before a potential Netflix purchase..

Critics of the deal say a Netflix purchase of Warner Bros. would result in a significant market dominance by the streaming company, a sentiment also echoed by US President Donald Trump, who said such a deal “could be a problem.”

Edited by: Dmytro Hubenko

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Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Russia’s goals in Ukraine are unchanged and will be accomplished either through negotiations or by further military advances if diplomatic efforts fail.

Putin, speaking at an annual board meeting of the country’s Defense Ministry, touted Russia’s military progress on the battlefield and technological advancements as his war in Ukraine grinds on into a fourth year.

“The goals of the special military operation will undoubtedly be achieved,” he said, using the Kremlin’s term to refer to Moscow’s 2022 full-scale invasion.

“We would prefer to accomplish this and address the root causes of the conflict through diplomatic means. However, if the opposing side and its foreign patrons refuse to engage in substantive dialogue, Russia will achieve the liberation of its historical lands by military means,” the Russian leader told military officials, according to a transcript of the speech released by the government.

PUTIN CALLS TRUMP’S PEACE PLAN A ‘STARTING POINT’ AS HE WARNS UKRAINE TO PULL BACK OR FACE ‘FORCE’

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chief of the General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov attend the annual board meeting of the Defense Ministry in Moscow Dec. 17, 2025. (Alexander Kazakov/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Putin also took aim at Kyiv and its European allies for “whipping up hysteria” about Moscow as the Trump administration works to end the war. 

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte warned allies last week that Russia could be ready to use military force against the alliance within five years and urged members to boost defense spending and production, so their armed forces have the resources to protect their homelands.

Putin referred to European leaders as “piglets” during the Defense Ministry meeting, according to a translated video of the remarks posted by Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

TRUMP TOUTS ‘TREMENDOUS PROGRESS’ BUT SAYS HE’LL MEET PUTIN AND ZELENSKYY ‘ONLY WHEN’ PEACE DEAL IS FINAL

Russian troops stand for a moment of silence at the annual board meeting of the Defense Ministry in Moscow Dec. 17, 2025. (Alexander Kazakov/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

The comment was part of a broader tirade against the West, with Putin accusing European governments of helping Washington try to weaken and divide Russia.

“They were hoping to profit from the collapse of our country. To get back something that was lost in previous historical periods and try to take revenge,” said Putin. “As it has now become obvious to everyone, all these attempts and all these destructive plans towards Russia completely failed.”

The remarks come as U.S., European, Russian and Ukrainian officials engage in a flurry of diplomacy over potential paths to ending the war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his negotiating team met in Berlin Sunday with Jared Kushner and U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine.

(Front row from left) Finnish President Alexander Stubb, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and (back row from left) Jonas Gahr, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, Ursula von der Leyen, Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson stand together in the chancellery in Berlin, Germany, on Dec. 15, 2025. (Markus Schreiber, Pool/AP)

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Witkoff and Kushner previously held a five-hour meeting in Moscow with Putin and top foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov in early December to hash out elements of a revised peace proposal after the original leaked 28-point draft drew criticism for being too favorable to the Kremlin.

Ushakov said the Russian side received four documents from the U.S. envoys during the meeting, including one that consisted of 27 points, but he declined to go into detail of what they contained.

Ashley Carnahan is a writer at Fox News Digital.

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During a press conference on Dec. 11, 2025, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced there was good news on the state of the economy.

“Inflation as measured by the overall CPI has slowed to an average 2.5% pace,” she said, referring to the consumer price index. “Real wages are increasing roughly $1,200 dollars for the average worker.”

When CNN political correspondent Kaitlan Collins attempted to ask a follow-up question, Leavitt pivoted to an attack. Not on Collins, a frequent target of White House ire, but on Leavitt’s predecessor in the Biden White House, Democrat Jen Psaki.

Psaki, claimed Leavitt, stood at the same lectern a year before and told “utter lies.” In contrast, Leavitt insisted, “Everything I’m telling you is the truth backed by real, factual data, and you just don’t want to report on it ’cause you want to push untrue narratives about the president.”

The “real, factual data” that underpinned Leavitt’s statement was specious at best. The actual inflation rate for September was 3%, not the 2.5% figure cherry-picked from economic data. The rise in real wages? CNN business editor David Goldman writes that in the past year, U.S. workers have experienced “the lowest annual paycheck growth that Americans have had since May 2021.”

I’m a historian who has written about the enduring legacy of George Orwell’s ideas about truth and freedom. Listening to Leavitt assert a “truth” so obviously discordant with people’s lives, I was reminded of the repeated pronouncements from the Ministry of Plenty in Orwell’s “1984.”

Leavitt is a master of the art of political language and deflects attention from administration scandals (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

“The fabulous statistics continued to pour out of the telescreen,” Orwell wrote. “As compared with last year there was more food, more clothes, more houses, more furniture, more cooking-pots, more fuel, more ships, more helicopters, more books, more babies — more of everything except disease, crime, and insanity. Year by year and minute by minute, everybody and everything was whizzing rapidly upwards.”

The novel’s doomed hero, Winston Smith, works in the Records Department that produces these fraudulent statistics – figures that are so far divorced from reality that they “had no connection with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie.”

In the world of “1984,” not only are statistics invented, they are continually reinvented to serve the needs of Big Brother’s regime at any given moment: “All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.”

Transparency as doublespeak

The lack of transparency depicted in “1984” has an uncanny echo in our current political moment, despite Leavitt’s repeated assertions that President Donald Trump is the “most transparent president in history.”

Leavitt has made that claim countless times, including in her public defense of Trump’s “Quiet, Piggy!” dismissal of Bloomberg News journalist Catherine Lucey last month.

In Leavitt’s usage, “transparency” has become a form of Orwellian “doublespeak,” a word or phrase which through the process of “doublethink” had come to encompass its exact opposite meaning.

“Doublethink,” in Orwell’s writing, was the mechanism of thought manipulation that allowed someone “to know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them.”

Doublethink was the mechanism that enabled the citizens of Oceania, the Anglo-American superstate governed by Big Brother’s authoritarian regime, to accept that “WAR IS PEACE; FREEDOM IS SLAVERY; IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”

And it is the mechanism that allowed Leavitt to proclaim, in defending Trump’s unwillingness to release the Epstein files, “This administration has done more with respect to transparency when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein than any administration ever.” That claim was pronounced “fabulously audacious” by The Guardian’s Washington bureau chief, David Smith, in a story headlined “Nothing to see here: Trump press chief in full denial mode over Epstein.”

About the author

Laura Beers is a Professor of History at American University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Making ‘lies sound truthful and murder respectable’

In his famous essay “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell wrote that “political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Over the past 10 months, Leavitt has, among other things, claimed that the now dismantled U.S. Agency for International Development – USAID – provided a grant of $32,000 for a “transgender comic book” in Peru. Not true. She has misrepresented the “One Big Beautiful Bill” as fully eliminating taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security. In reality, deductions for these are capped. She claimed that Trump coined the motto “peace through strength.” He didn’t. The phrase has been in circulation for decades, used most prominently by Ronald Reagan during his presidency.

And she recently sought to delegitimize U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly and colleagues’ plea to servicemen and women not to obey illegal orders by suggesting tautologically that “all lawful orders are presumed to be legal by our servicemembers,” and hence Kelly’s plea could only serve to provoke “disorder and chaos.”

All governments lie. But Leavitt has become a master of the art of political language, wielded to aggrandize her boss, belittle his opponents and deflect attention from administration scandals.

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NEED TO KNOW

• Aris Smith Kopiec was trying to enjoy her vacation in Georgia with her three kids
• But when she breastfed her baby at the table, she was kicked out of the restaurant
• Now, the mom tells PEOPLE that she hopes her experience will create more empathy for others who are breastfeeding

Aris Smith Kopiec was just trying to enjoy her vacation with her family when the unthinkable happened.

Back in November, the mom was on a weekend vacation in Blue Ridge, Ga. with her husband and three kids — ages 4 months, 2, and 4 — when they decided to dine at Toccoa Riverside Restaurant.

Seated in the enclosed porch area at a corner table with some family friends, Smith Kopiec tells PEOPLE that her kids were well-behaved. While coloring, playing with stickers and stringing beads, they remained in their chairs except for bathroom breaks. But during the meal, her 4-month-old began to get fussy.

“My husband handed her to me, and I latched her on,” Smith Kopiec recalls to PEOPLE. “My husband then handed me a blanket to cover. I was seated with my back facing the rest of the restaurant. After a short time, my baby fell asleep and I continued holding her, no longer nursing.”

Once they were finished with their family, Smith Kopiec and her friend took their kids outside to go look at the river. As she stood, she accidentally bumped into a chair or person and turned to apologize.

“At that moment, the restaurant owner was standing over me and began yelling, saying, ‘You can’t do that here. Go to the corner,’ ” she claims. “I told him I was not actively breastfeeding at that moment, but he continued yelling that breastfeeding was not allowed and that he needed to ‘protect his restaurant.’ ”

“I explained that I was trying to exit through the side door, but he was blocking the doorway,” Smith continues. “He eventually moved aside and said, ‘Good, go on.’ ”

A rep for the restaurant did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

When she was outside the restaurant, it became more clear to her that she’d been asked to leave because she was breastfeeding. Smith Kopiec told her friend what happened, and they returned inside to get their belongings and find their husbands, who had been paying the bill. At that time, their husbands said while they were outside, another employee of the restaurant came up to them to apologize.

“As we were leaving through the front of the restaurant, I saw the owner standing near the entrance,” Smith Kopiec says, recounting that she “calmly approached him and told him that breastfeeding is legally protected in Georgia and that if he wanted to protect his business, he should follow the law.”

She claims, “At that point, he became increasingly aggressive, repeatedly stating that he did not have to allow breastfeeding and that it was not his responsibility to ‘raise my children.’ ”

Aris Smith Kopiec and her family.

Shyla Keiper with Shyla Shoots Photography

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Per Georgia law, “a mother may breastfeed her baby in any location where the mother and baby are otherwise authorized to be.” However, it does not stipulate any penalties for businesses that violate the state’s code.

At that moment, Smith Kopiec decided to record their interaction and share the video on her social media. The video soon went viral, garnering over 14,000 likes since it was posted to Instagram on Nov. 23. The mom of three said she felt like she was in shock during the altercation.

“I knew breastfeeding was legal, but I wasn’t prepared to be confronted so aggressively while simply feeding my baby,” she says. “I also felt vulnerable because my children were watching, and I didn’t want to escalate the situation or put them in a dangerous position.”

After sharing her video, Smith Kopiec received a lot of support from commenters who were just as shocked as she was. “The support has been overwhelming, and I’m incredibly grateful for it,” she tells PEOPLE. “At the same time, I’ve been surprised by how many people are openly uncomfortable with breastfeeding, even when it’s legal and discreet.”

“Reading those comments really reinforced for me why sharing this mattered — not to provoke anyone, but to highlight how much education and empathy are still needed around something as basic as feeding a baby,” she says.

Aris Smith Kopiec and family.

Shyla Keiper with Shyla Shoots Photography

She also underscores that she didn’t record and share the video to shame people, but rather to educate on what breastfeeding actually looks like. “I think what’s important to add is the gap in between knowing your rights and knowing how to exercise them in real time,” Smith Kopiec explains. “I knew that I could not legally be asked to leave for breastfeeding, but at that moment it wasn’t clear what that actually meant.”

“Was I supposed to sit back down and refuse to move? Was law enforcement going to be called? And if they were, would they even know the law? All of that was running through my mind while my children were standing there watching a grown man yell at their mother,” she says.

Smith Kopiec says at that moment, her first priority was to make sure she was protecting her kids and getting them out of a potentially dangerous situation as calmly as possible. “That’s why I chose to share the video afterward. Not to shame, but to educate — for moms, for business owners and even for law enforcement — so that everyone understands what breastfeeding protections actually look like in real life, not just on paper,” she says.

Smith Kopiec adds, “If this helps even one parent feel more confident feeding their baby or standing up for themselves, then something meaningful came out of a really uncomfortable experience.”

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