July 20, 2025, 2:26 p.m. ETPresident Trump has encouraged his base to move on from Jeffrey Epstein.Credit...Uma Sanghvi/Palm Beach Post, via Associated PressDays after the Justice Department asked a federal judge to unseal grand jury testimony related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, Republicans and Democrats suggested on Sunday that the move was insufficient and called for the release of more information.“I think it’s a good start,” Representative Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, said in an interview on CNN. But he still wanted to see as many files as possible released, he added later.President Trump has been contending with fierce criticism from some of his supporters over his administration’s handling of materials related to the sex trafficking investigations of Mr. Epstein and his connections to rich and powerful figures on the left and right. Mr. Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while in federal prison awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.Mr. Trump and many of his allies vowed to release a trove of files in the case, including a so-called “client list” that many involved in the case insist never existed. But the release of some documents earlier this year offered no new revelations. And the Justice Department said this month that it had closed the case and would not release more documents, concluding that there was no client list.One of Mr. Epstein’s former lawyers, Alan Dershowitz, said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday” that the grand jury testimony was unlikely to contain the information that has most interested Mr. Trump’s supporters.Mr. Trump has encouraged his base to move on. But the backlash seemed to be on his mind on Sunday morning, when he accused “Radical Left Democrats” of exposing the “Jeffrey Epstein Hoax.”Mr. Burchett also took up Mr. Trump’s argument on Sunday, saying that Democrats had the chance to release the materials when former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was in office.At the same time, Mr. Burchett is one of 10 Republicans who has signed on to an effort to force a vote on whether the administration should release the files. The procedural maneuver would require a majority of House members, and Mr. Burchett said he was not sure if it would succeed.“I have no earthly idea,” he said on CNN. “You know this town buries secrets.”Democrats in Congress have seized on the divide that has opened up between Mr. Trump and his supporters, trying to force votes on measures that call for the release of Epstein-related files and pressing for hearings. They have rejected Mr. Trump’s efforts to redirect the blame to them.“The president blaming Democrats for this disaster, Jake, is like that CEO that got caught on camera blaming Coldplay,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, referring to a viral video that showed the married chief executive of a tech company with his arms around a woman who is not his wife.Ms. Klobuchar instead blamed the public’s clamoring for the files on right-wing politicians, including President Trump, who she said had sown distrust in federal prosecutors over the case.“People have a reason that they want to know what’s in there,” Ms. Klobuchar said. “They believe the president when he said there’s stuff in there that people should see.”Alyce McFadden contributed reporting.July 20, 2025, 12:29 p.m. ETMaria Farmer in August 2019. Ms. Farmer said in an interview with The New York Times that she twice told the F.B.I. about a troubling encounter she had with Donald J. Trump, and about how close he was with Jeffrey Epstein.Credit...Andrea Morales for The New York TimesIt was the summer of 1996 when Maria Farmer went to law enforcement to complain about Jeffrey Epstein.At the time, she said, she had been sexually assaulted by Mr. Epstein and his longtime partner, Ghislaine Maxwell. Ms. Farmer, then in her mid-20s, had also learned about a troubling encounter that her younger sister — then a teenager — had endured at Mr. Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico. And she described facing threats from Mr. Epstein.Ms. Farmer said that when she discussed her concerns with the New York Police Department, then with the F.B.I., she also urged them to take a broader look at the people in Mr. Epstein’s orbit, including Donald J. Trump, then still two decades from being elected president. She repeated that message, she said, when the F.B.I. interviewed her again about Mr. Epstein in 2006.Her account is among the clearest indications yet of how Mr. Trump might have come to be named in the unreleased investigative files in the Epstein case, a matter that has generated another political uproar in recent weeks.In interviews this week about what she told the authorities, Ms. Farmer said she had no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Mr. Epstein’s associates. But she said she was alarmed by what she saw as Mr. Epstein’s pattern of pursuing girls and young women while building friendships with prominent people, including Mr. Trump and President Bill Clinton.Investigations like the ones that targeted Mr. Epstein often explore a wide range of tips, evidence, recollections and relationships, little of which ends up being used in court records or as the basis for criminal prosecution. Mr. Epstein’s voluminous investigative file contains many records that have not been made public, but that became the focus of claims, long stoked by Mr. Trump’s allies, that authorities might have covered up the involvement of other rich and powerful men.Now, after his attorney general and F.B.I. director abruptly abandoned their earlier promises to reveal everything about the Epstein files and said, in effect, that there was nothing to see, Mr. Trump’s ties to Mr. Epstein are under renewed scrutiny, leading to questions about what so-far-undisclosed appearances he might have in the investigative record.The story of Ms. Farmer’s efforts to call law enforcement attention to Mr. Epstein and his circle shows how the case files could contain material that is embarrassing or politically problematic to Mr. Trump, even if it is largely extraneous to Mr. Epstein’s crimes and was never fully investigated or corroborated.And it underscores the complexities of opening up to scrutiny all the leads that investigators pursued, the evidence they gathered and the interviews they conducted, little of which ever went before a judge or jury.Law enforcement agencies have not accused Mr. Trump of any wrongdoing related to Mr. Epstein, and he has never been identified as a target of any associated investigation. Mr. Trump last week called for relevant grand jury testimony in the prosecution of Mr. Epstein to be publicly released, and has repeatedly dismissed any notion that he has something to hide. Even if that testimony is released, it is unlikely to shed much light on the relationship between the two men, which did not figure prominently in Mr. Epstein’s criminal cases.Ms. Farmer said she has long wondered how law enforcement agencies handled her complaints in 1996 and 2006.And she said she has been wondering in particular whether federal authorities did anything with her concerns about Mr. Trump. She said that she raised his name both times, not only because he seemed so close to Mr. Epstein but because of an encounter, which she has previously described publicly, that she said she had with Mr. Trump in Mr. Epstein’s New York office.‘She’s Not Here for You’The encounter with Mr. Trump, Ms. Farmer said, occurred in 1995 as she was preparing to work for Mr. Epstein. She said she told the authorities that late one night, Mr. Epstein unexpectedly called her to his offices in a luxury building in Manhattan, and she arrived in running shorts.Mr. Trump then arrived, wearing a business suit, and started to hover over her, she said she told the authorities.Ms. Farmer said she recalled feeling scared as Mr. Trump stared at her bare legs. Then Mr. Epstein entered the room, and she recalled him saying to Mr. Trump: “No, no. She’s not here for you.”The two men left the room, and Ms. Farmer said she could hear Mr. Trump commenting that he thought Ms. Farmer was 16 years old.After her encounter with Mr. Trump, Ms. Farmer said, she had no other alarming interactions with him, and did not see him engage in inappropriate conduct with girls or women.The White House on Friday night contested Ms. Farmer’s account and cited Mr. Trump’s long-ago decision to end his friendship with Mr. Epstein.“The president was never in his office,” said Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, referring to Mr. Epstein. “The fact is that the president kicked him out of his club for being a creep.”Reports to Law EnforcementMs. Farmer, an artist, worked for Mr. Epstein in 1995 and 1996, initially to acquire art on his behalf but then later to oversee the comings and goings of girls, young women and celebrities at the front entrance of his Upper East Side townhouse.In 1996, Ms. Farmer said she went to stay at Mr. Epstein’s estate in Ohio in a complex developed by Leslie H. Wexner, the chief executive of the company that owned Victoria’s Secret. Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell came that summer.Ms. Farmer said that after she was asked to give Mr. Epstein a foot massage, he and Ms. Maxwell violently groped her until she fled the room and barricaded herself in another part of the building. Ms. Farmer was an artist who did work on nude figures, and she also reported that partially nude photos she had of her two younger sisters were missing from a storage lockbox.Over the years, Ms. Farmer has been attacked by people who questioned whether she could be trusted. She was not called to testify when Ms. Maxwell was prosecuted and convicted in 2021 of conspiring with Mr. Epstein to sexually exploit and abuse girls. (Her sister Annie did testify in the case about how Ms. Maxwell had massaged her bare chest after she had been invited to Mr. Epstein’s estate in New Mexico.)But Ms. Farmer’s mother said she remembered hearing about the Trump encounter around the time it occurred in 1996, and that Ms. Farmer had first gone to the F.B.I. that year. Annie Farmer also said she remembered Maria sharing that she had told the F.B.I. about Mr. Epstein and powerful people like Mr. Trump and Mr. Clinton.In her first interviews with The Times in 2019, Maria Farmer said that before she talked to the F.B.I., she first spoke to the Sixth Precinct of the New York Police Department. Police records show that she had done that in August 1996.Law enforcement agencies have not released records of any F.B.I. report Ms. Farmer made in 1996, but handwritten notes from the interview agents did with her a decade later match her account, including that “6th precinct told MF to call FBI.”The portions of those F.B.I. records that have been released do not mention Mr. Trump, but much of the account remains redacted.The F.B.I. did not respond to a request for comment.Unclear Follow-UpMr. Epstein was indicted in 2006 and later pleaded guilty to two felony charges, including soliciting a minor, in a deal that avoided federal charges. In 2019, he was charged again, accused of trafficking dozens of girls, some as young as 14, and engaging in sex acts with them. He was later found dead in a jail cell, and officials have said he hanged himself.It is unclear whether federal investigators pursued a deeper examination of Mr. Trump’s relationship with Mr. Epstein or whether the authorities documented what Ms. Farmer said she told them about Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump’s friendship with Mr. Epstein has been captured in videos of them partying together and comments the men have made, and his name appears in some previously released case records, including Mr. Epstein’s flight logs. Mr. Trump was quoted in 2002 as calling Mr. Epstein a “terrific guy.” He has since said that he is “not a fan” of Mr. Epstein, and has emphasized that he broke with him two decades ago.In recent years, Mr. Trump’s allies have pressed for further release of federal files related to Mr. Epstein. But after initially promising full disclosure, Attorney General Pam Bondi suddenly backtracked this month, saying that a review of the case found nothing to indicate that anyone else should be charged.Amid a backlash from his supporters in recent days, Mr. Trump has assailed those still calling for more disclosure. After The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that Mr. Epstein had received a sexually suggestive birthday greeting from Mr. Trump in 2003, Mr. Trump called the report a hoax and sued the news organization.July 20, 2025, 12:19 p.m. ETRepresentative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on CBS that there is no legal basis for criminal referrals on documents that White House officials said showed evidence of a plot to undermine Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Himes dismissed the accusation, calling it a “sleight of hand” by Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence.“There is not a judge in the land” who would take such a case seriously, Himes said. But he added that Gabbard’s accusations, while baseless, are also reckless. “When you start throwing around language like treason, somebody will get hurt,” he said.July 20, 2025, 11:25 a.m. ETOn Fox News, Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington, dismissed the notion that Zohran Mamdani, the progressive winner of New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary, would become the new face of the party.Some Democrats have worried that Mamdani’s sudden prominence and left wing platform could damage the party’s chances in next year’s midterms. Smith brushed aside those concerns, describing the party as a “big tent” and adding that Mamdani did not speak for the whole party.“The mayor of New York has never, ever, ever been the leader of the Democratic party,” Smith said.July 20, 2025, 11:16 a.m. ETPresident Trump, in a social media post on Sunday, called on the Washington Commanders of the N.F.L. to revert back to their former name, the Washington Redskins, which the team dropped in 2020 after decades of lobbying by Native American groups. Trump also called on the Cleveland Guardians baseball team, which changed its name from the Cleveland Indians in 2021, to do the same. Mr. Trump claimed that there was “a big clamoring for this,” adding that Native Americans’ “heritage and prestige is systematically being taken away from them.”July 20, 2025, 11:04 a.m. ETTulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said she would make a criminal referral to the F.B.I. based on documents she released last week. The documents, Gabbard said on Fox Business, were evidence of a conspiracy to manipulate intelligence in an attempt to claim that Russia sought to support Donald Trump in the 2016 election. But those documents presented no evidence of manipulation. They demonstrated only that intelligence officials saw no evidence before the November 2016 election that Russia had hacked voting systems, and that after the election they were more concerned with Russia’s broader influence efforts, such as releasing stolen documents to denigrate Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee.Credit...Eric Lee for The New York TimesJuly 20, 2025, 10:44 a.m. ETSenator David McCormick, Republican of Pennsylvania, said on Fox News that he was frustrated by questions about why the Trump administration reversed course on releasing the Epstein files. McCormick said he supported the release of “all credible information” from the grand jury proceedings, but added that the continued attention on the matter was “distracting from the focus of the things that the American people voted for.”July 20, 2025, 10:36 a.m. ETSeveral senior officials at the Pentagon have recently left the Defense Department’s top ranks.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York TimesA top adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has left his position, the Pentagon announced late Saturday, becoming the latest in a string of senior officials to leave the department’s top ranks.The official, Justin Fulcher, joined the Trump administration as part of the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk’s government overhaul initiative, and later became an adviser to Mr. Hegseth.In a statement, Mr. Fulcher said he had planned to work for the federal government for only six months.Earlier this month, The Washington Post detailed a confrontation between Mr. Fulcher and other DOGE staff members assigned to the Pentagon. But officials downplayed that incident as a cause, insisting Mr. Fulcher’s exit was friendly.Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement that “the Department of Defense is grateful to Justin Fulcher for his work on behalf of President Trump and Secretary Hegseth.”Under Mr. Hegseth, the office of the secretary of defense, the core group of advisers who help manage the Pentagon’s sprawling bureaucracy, has undergone an unusual amount of turnover.In April, Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick, aides to Mr. Hegseth, were placed on leave from the Pentagon amid a leak investigation. Colin Carroll, the chief of staff to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen A. Feinberg, was also removed from the Pentagon. After those actions, Joe Kasper, Mr. Hegseth’s first chief of staff, was moved to a different position.John Ullyot, a veteran spokesman, also left his position at the Pentagon in April, citing disarray and a sense of incompetence.The purges among Mr. Hegseth’s major aides fed a sense of chaos, with appointees accusing one another of disloyalty and tense shouting matches breaking out inside the building.Mr. Fulcher tried to distance his departure from any sense of disorganization or dysfunction inside Mr. Hegseth’s office.“Working alongside the dedicated men and women of the Department of Defense has been incredibly inspiring,” he said in his statement. “Revitalizing the warrior ethos, rebuilding the military, and re-establishing deterrence are just some of the historic accomplishments I’m proud to have witnessed.”July 20, 2025, 9:29 a.m. ETRepresentative Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, said on CNN that he had “no earthly idea” whether the bipartisan effort to force a House vote on whether the Trump administration should release the Epstein files would succeed.The procedural maneuver would require a majority of House members to sign on, and Burchett is one of 10 Republicans so far to back it.Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesJuly 20, 2025, 9:16 a.m. ETSenator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, said on CNN that the Justice Department’s efforts to release grand jury testimony from the prosecution of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein was not enough to quiet concerns about the department’s handing of the case. She added that right-wing politicians, including President Trump, had sown distrust in federal prosecutors over the case and were now facing the results of that.“People have a reason that they want to know what’s in there,” she said in an interview with Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.” “They believe the president when he said there’s stuff in there that people should see.”July 20, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ETCongressional MemoCredit...Kenny Holston/The New York TimesRepublicans’ relentless marathon to force President Trump’s agenda through Congress over objections from Democrats and some in their own ranks is taking a toll on the institution and its members, prompting tempers to boil over and relationships to fray on Capitol Hill, with potentially disastrous consequences ahead.In recent days, lawmakers clashed bitterly over federal spending, presidential nominees and even broadly supported cryptocurrency bills — all while a dispute raged over releasing files in the case of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. The normally staid proceedings of Congress were punctuated with shouting matches, a committee walkout, charges of abandoned deals and Democratic demands to fire the director of the Office of Management and Budget.By Thursday, Republican leaders in the Senate and House rushed to finish their business and get exhausted lawmakers out of Washington to allow them some time to cool off.And that was just last week. Veteran lawmakers said that the level of vitriol and dysfunction in the Capitol had reached a fever pitch.“It is bad — really bad,” Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said when asked to assess the mood on Capitol Hill. “There’s a level of frustration. How do we get back to doing our jobs?”“There’s a level of frustration,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. “How do we get back to doing our jobs?”Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York TimesRepublicans have achieved hard-won legislative victories, but those have come at a cost, setting the stage for a meltdown that has, among other things, raised the prospects of a government shutdown this fall. Some G.O.P. lawmakers are feeling squeezed, while Democrats, outraged that the White House is shredding funding agreements and doling out money however it wants, are threatening to abandon a tradition of bipartisan spending deals.“I want to warn my colleagues once again: If you keep going down this path, you are going to further undermine our bipartisan process,” said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. “The more bridges you burn, the fewer paths you leave to get things done.”Her comments came as all but two Republicans banded together to push through legislation around 1 a.m. on Friday allowing the Trump administration to cancel $9 billion in previously approved spending on foreign aid and public broadcasting. Ms. Murkowski, one of the two opponents in her party, said the measure was an unacceptable breach of congressional spending power.It was not just the spending divide that was inciting tumult on Capitol Hill. In a lengthy session on Thursday evening, Democrats and Republicans on the powerful House Rules Committee engaged in nasty back-and-forth over the rising clamor for Congress to vote on releasing criminal files in the investigation of Mr. Epstein, who died by suicide in a federal jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.That morning, Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee had stormed out of a meeting in protest after Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who leads the panel, cut off debate and forced a committee vote on the disputed judicial nomination of Emil Bove III.Mr. Bove, a Justice Department official and former defense attorney for Mr. Trump, is up for an influential post on a federal appeals court that encompasses Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. He has been accused by a former Justice Department colleague of declaring a willingness to defy court orders on immigration, a charge Mr. Bove has disputed.Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee walked out Thursday during a hearing over Emil Bove’s nomination to the federal appeals court.Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesDemocrats wanted more time to examine the nomination. But Mr. Grassley forged ahead despite those demands, ramming the approval through in one of a series of Republican-only votes. Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, implored him to stop, accusing the chairman of “an abuse of power.” The two had worked closely in the past on criminal justice issues.“To me, it is a president who has such a thrall over the Republicans in the Senate that he could get them to surrender not just their power, but their constitutional obligations,” Mr. Booker said after the blowup, adding that Republicans were relinquishing their ability to provide a check on White House nominees.Mr. Grassley dismissed the complaints, claiming Democrats had executed “a political hit job” on Mr. Bove. He said Democrats had shut down Republican members of the committee in the past, when they held the gavel in the majority.“This is not unprecedented — either the walking away or what we did as a majority,” Mr. Grassley said. “It has happened before, and we have to move things along.”Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget and the chief architect of a campaign to pry spending power away from Congress, exacerbated tensions on Capitol Hill. He told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast that there needed to be less bipartisanship around federal spending — not a sentiment typically heard on Capitol Hill. He also reiterated his contention that spending levels set by Congress were an advisory ceiling, not a floor.His commentary infuriated Democrats already bristling at the $9 billion in added cuts — the first approved by Congress in decades under a special procedure that allows the president to cancel spending.Russell T. Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, called for more partisanship in the congressional spending process.Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times“He wants to destroy,” Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and minority leader, said as he called for Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Vought. “Destroy the way that Congress works, destroy the balance of power and upend our entire Constitution. Russell Vought doesn’t believe in this democracy.”Mr. Vought’s comments could complicate efforts by Republicans and Democrats to work out spending levels for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. Democrats said that his argument destroyed any incentive for them to strike deals, since he made clear the White House would seek to unravel them later with an assist from Senate Republicans. A test vote in the Senate on the first of the annual spending bills is scheduled for Tuesday.“That just profoundly undermined the stability and purpose of a bipartisan appropriations process,” Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware and a member of the Appropriations Committee, said of Mr. Vought’s comments.Some lawmakers attributed the congressional edginess to lawmakers being wrung out from repeated all-night sessions to push through the Republican tax cut and domestic policy bill, and from late-night Senate debate over the additional cuts sought by the administration.“A lot of this is people are just tired,” said Senator John Boozman, Republican of Arkansas. “Hopefully this all blows over soon.”Republicans, however, seem ready to plunge ahead, and see the Democratic complaints as the product of frustration over G.O.P. success.Senators John Boozman and Susan Collins at the Capitol last month.Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times“We are trying to do big things and do it in ways to reduce the damage we saw coming from the last administration, when the Democrats had the House, the Senate and the White House,” said Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 2 Senate Republican.Some of the fights have occurred within Republican ranks. On Wednesday, an internal House Republican dispute over cryptocurrency legislation led to a usually routine process vote being held open for more than nine hours as leaders toiled to secure the necessary support. It was just the latest in a series of congressional records being set with extended floor fights and speeches.“I am tired of making history,” Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Wednesday night. “I just want a normal Congress.”Given the intensity of the divisions so far and the potential momentous clashes ahead, normal seems out of the question.Megan Mineiro contributed reporting.July 20, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ETAna Swanson and Tripp MickleAna Swanson reported from Washington and Tripp Mickle from San FranciscoTreasury Secretary Scott Bessent, left, and Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, second from right, meeting with Chinese officials in Geneva in May.Credit...Martial Trezzini/Keystone, via ReutersIn recent years, one of China’s biggest requests of American officials has been that the United States relax its strict controls on advanced artificial intelligence chips, measures that were put in place to slow Beijing’s technological and military gains.Last week, the Trump administration did just that, as it allowed the world’s leader in A.I. chips, the U.S.-based Nvidia, to begin selling a lower-level but still coveted chip known as H20 to China.The move was a dramatic reversal from three months ago, when President Trump himself banned China from accessing the H20, while also imposing triple-digit tariffs on Beijing. That set off an economically perilous trade clash, as China retaliated by clamping down on exports of minerals and magnets that are critical to American factories, including automakers and defense manufacturers.China’s decision to cut off access to those materials upended the dynamic between the world’s largest economies. The Trump administration, which came into office determined to bully China into changing its trade behavior with punishing tariffs, appeared to realize the perils of that approach. Now, the administration has resorted to trying to woo China instead.Officials throughout the government say the Trump administration is putting more aggressive actions on China on hold, while pushing forward with moves that the Chinese will perceive positively. That includes the reversal on the H20 chip.The H20 decision was primarily motivated by top Trump officials who agreed with Nvidia’s arguments that selling the chip would be better for American technology leadership than withholding it, people familiar with the move say.But Trump officials have also claimed that it was part of the trade talks. After telling Congress in June that there was “no quid pro quo in terms of chips for rare earths,” Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, reversed those comments on July 15, saying that the H20 move was “all part of a mosaic” of talks with China. “They had things we wanted, we had things they wanted, and we’re in a very good place,” he said.A chip from Nvidia. The company’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, has gone on a lobbying blitz in Washington, pushing politicians to open China for A.I. chip sales.Credit...Mike Kai Chen for The New York TimesA Chinese Ministry of Commerce official seemed to reject that on Friday, saying that the United States had “taken the initiative” to approve the H20 sales. China believes the U.S. should continue to remove its trade and economic restrictions, the official said.A person familiar with the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said that the H20 chip was not specifically discussed in meetings between Chinese and American officials in Geneva and London this spring. But the reversal was part of a more recent cadence of warmer actions the United States and China have taken toward each other. For instance, Beijing agreed in recent weeks to block the export of several chemicals used to make fentanyl, an issue Mr. Trump has been concerned about.Recent events have underscored the influence that China has over the U.S. economy. When Mr. Trump raised tariffs on Chinese exports in April, some top Trump officials thought Beijing would quickly fold, given its recent economic weakness. Instead, Beijing called Mr. Trump’s bluff by restricting rare earths needed by American makers of cars, military equipment, medical devices and electronics.As the flow of those materials stopped, Mr. Trump and other officials began receiving calls from chief executives saying their factories would soon shut down. Ford, Suzuki and other companies shuttered factories because of the lack of supply.Mr. Trump and his top advisers were surprised by the threat that Beijing’s countermove posed, people familiar with the matter say. That brought the United States back to the negotiating table this spring to strike a fragile trade truce, which Trump officials are now wary of upsetting. That agreement dropped tariffs from a minimum 145 percent to 30 percent, with the Chinese agreeing to allow rare earths to flow as freely as before.The administration’s caution when it comes to China has been amplified by Mr. Trump’s desire for an invitation to Beijing later this year. The president, who has been feted on other foreign trips, wants to engage in face-to-face trade negotiations with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, has begun recruiting chief executives for a potential delegation, setting off a competition over who will get to ride in Air Force One, according to people familiar with the plans.Craig Allen, a retired diplomat, said both countries were “clearly preparing for a summit meeting,” adding, “that’s bringing forth measures that the other side wants and it’s also holding back measures that the other side doesn’t want.”“It’s like a dance,” Mr. Allen said. “One side makes a move, the other side makes a move to correspond to that.”The Commerce Department declined to comment. The White House, the Treasury Department and the Office of the United States Trade Representative did not respond to a request for comment.“The government understands that forcing the world to use foreign competition would only hurt America’s economic and national security,” John Rizzo, a spokesman for Nvidia, said.A Chinese bargaining chipOpposition to China has fueled bipartisan action for the last decade. Now, Mr. Trump’s more hawkish supporters are quietly watching as the president remakes the party’s China strategy.Though few are willing to speak out publicly, officials in the Trump administration and in Congress have privately expressed concern that the trade war has given China an opening to finally bring U.S. technology controls onto the negotiating table.Christopher Padilla, a former export control official in the George W. Bush administration, said the fact that the United States was now negotiating over what were supposed to be security restrictions was “a significant accomplishment for the Chinese.”“They’ve been after this for decades, and now they’ve succeeded,” he said. “I assume the Chinese are going to demand more concessions on export controls in return for whatever we want next.”Mr. Trump was the first to harness the power of U.S. export controls, by targeting Chinese tech giant Huawei and putting global restrictions on American technology in his first term. But the Biden administration expanded those rules. Concerned that China’s growing A.I. capacity would advance its military, Biden officials cracked down on exports of Nvidia chips, seeing them as the most effective choke point over Chinese A.I. capabilities.President Trump and Mr. Huang at the White House in April. Mr. Huang argues that blocking U.S. technology from China has created more urgency for China to develop its own technology.Credit...Pete Marovich for The New York TimesSince then, when Chinese officials raised their objections to U.S. technology controls in meetings, U.S. officials had responded by insisting that the measures were national security matters and not up for debate.But in the meeting in Geneva in May, China finally had a powerful counterargument. Beijing insisted that its minerals and magnets, some of which go to fighter jets, drones and weaponry, were a “dual-use” technology that could be used for the military as well as civilian industries, just like A.I. and chips. It demanded reciprocity: If the United States wanted a steady flow of rare earths, Washington should also be ready to lessen its technology controls.It’s not clear exactly what the United States agreed to in Geneva: The White House released a joint statement about the meeting, though more detailed text has not been made public. But when the United States put out an unrelated export control announcement the day after the Geneva summit concluded, China responded angrily, saying the statement “undermined the consensus” the countries had reached.In a notice on May 13, the Commerce Department said that using Huawei’s A.I. chips “anywhere in the world” was an export control violation. The notice was directed at other nations considering purchasing Huawei chips, people familiar with the move said, not the Chinese. The announcement appeared to take other parts of the Trump administration by surprise, and within hours, the language in the release was walked back, though no policy changes were made.Mr. Bessent and Jamieson Greer, the trade representative, expressed concerns that such moves could damage trade talks with China, people familiar with the incident said.China once again clamped down on rare earth exports. Trying to find its own leverage, the United States responded by restricting exports of semiconductor design software, airplane parts and ethane.The two sides restored their truce in a meeting in London in June. Since then, trade in those products has restarted. But U.S. companies complain that Chinese licenses for rare earth magnets are limited to six months, and that the Chinese government is requesting proprietary information to obtain those shipments.Beijing has also continued to build out its export controls. On July 15, the day after Nvidia said it would be permitted to sell the H20 in China, Chinese officials announced new restrictions on exports of battery technology.The United States has been trying to decrease its dependence on China for rare earths, but there is no quick solution. China has a powerful hold over numerous industries, ranging from pharmaceuticals to solar panels to drones.“The challenge for the Trump administration is, how do they get out of this quagmire?” said Jimmy Goodrich, a senior adviser for technology analysis to the RAND Corporation. “It appears some competitive U.S. actions are now at the whims of Beijing, who can now determine the time, place and nature of U.S. tech and trade policy toward China.”Deal makers in the White HouseThe change in the relationship with China has coincided with a separate shift in the administration, in which officials who favor technology controls on China have been sidelined in favor of those who support the tech industry’s ambitions to sell abroad.Mr. Lutnick and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state who has long been an ardent China critic, have hewed closely to the position of the president, who is more of a deal maker than a national security hawk. And hawkish members of the National Security Council have been fired in recent months, after being accused of insufficient loyalty.Their absence has paved the way for officials like David Sacks, the White House A.I. czar, who has criticized export controls, to push for tech companies to have freer rein. Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, has gone on a lobbying blitz in Washington, pushing politicians to open China for A.I. chip sales.Mr. Huang has contended that blocking U.S. technology from China has backfired by creating more urgency for China to develop its own technology. He has argued that the Chinese military won’t use Nvidia chips, and pushed back against Washington’s consensus that China is an adversary, describing it a “competitor” but “not our enemy.”The change in the U.S. relationship with China has coincided with a separate shift in the Trump administration, in which officials who favor technology controls on China have been sidelined.Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesOthers have challenged those assertions, pointing to past research that the Chinese military has placed orders for Nvidia chips. Scientific papers published earlier this year also showed Chinese researchers with ties to military universities and a top nuclear weapons lab using Nvidia chips for general research.Mr. Rizzo, the Nvidia spokesman, said in a statement that “non-military papers describing new and beneficial ways to use U.S. technology promote America.”In a letter on Friday, John Moolenaar, the Republican chairman of the House Select Committee on China, said the H20 chip had aided the rise of the Chinese A.I. model DeepSeek and would help China develop A.I. models to compete with American ones.These arguments do not appear to have persuaded the president. In an Oval Office meeting with Mr. Huang in July, Mr. Trump agreed with Nvidia that keeping American chips out of China would only help Huawei, and decided to reverse the H20 ban.People familiar with Mr. Trump’s views say he has always viewed export controls more transactionally. In his first term, Mr. Trump agreed to roll back U.S. restrictions on ZTE at the urging of Mr. Xi. In this term, Mr. Trump and his advisers have begun using America’s control over A.I. chips as a source of leverage in negotiations with governments from the Middle East to Asia.With China, Mr. Trump has his own longstanding aspirations. He believes that U.S. businesses have been getting ripped off for decades, and that he can be the one to fix it, particularly if he negotiates directly with Mr. Xi. His advisers have begun strategizing toward a more substantial trade negotiation with China focused on market opening, as well as the potential visit this fall.July 18, 2025, 7:13 p.m. ETThe Justice Department has formally filed two petitions in the Southern District of New York seeking to unseal grand jury records in the Jeffrey Epstein case.Credit...Jason Andrew for The New York TimesPresident Trump on Thursday directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to ask a federal judge to release transcripts of grand jury testimony related to the 2019 indictment of Jeffrey Epstein for sex trafficking. On social media, he said that “any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony” relating to Mr. Epstein should be released, “subject to Court approval.” On Friday, Ms. Bondi followed through. In court filings, she asked federal judges to unseal grand jury transcripts from Mr. Epstein’s case, and the prosecution of his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell as well.The request falls short of demands by Mr. Trump’s critics to release all of the government’s files on Mr. Epstein, who died in federal custody while awaiting trial.Generally, grand jury evidence is narrowly tailored by prosecutors to fit the criminal charges they want to file. So even if judges agree to unseal the grand jury testimony, it is unlikely to offer anything approaching an exhaustive accounting of what F.B.I. agents and prosecutors learned about Mr. Epstein’s activities. And the requests by the Justice Department to release the material will now most likely be only the beginning of a complicated process of review, redaction and potential release of testimony. Here’s how it might work.What is a grand jury?Grand juries are groups of citizens who hear evidence from prosecutors and witnesses in secret, and then decide whether to formally indict a person under investigation. Grand juries are used in both state and federal courts; they are typically convened to gather and weigh evidence before charges are filed in most felony cases.Compared with a trial, the grand jury process is friendlier to prosecutors, as jurors do not hear from lawyers representing the accused. And the standard for indicting people for a criminal offense is lower than the one for finding them guilty at trial.Why is grand jury material sealed?Grand juries are intended to be a screening mechanism, one that serves as a check on prosecutors to make sure that the government has a solid case before it brings criminal charges against someone in open court. Their proceedings are kept secret to protect the reputations of the people under government investigation who may turn out to be innocent or who are never charged with a crime. Secrecy also makes it easier to obtain full and truthful testimony from witnesses.Prosecutors, investigators and jurors are generally barred from revealing not only grand jury testimony, but also the very existence of a grand jury proceeding. Violators can be punished for contempt of court. The rules around witnesses are less strict. Grand jury investigations sometimes become known to the public when prosecutors issue subpoenas to witnesses for their testimony.What are the rules that govern the unsealing of grand jury testimony?The operating manual for grand jury secrecy is Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. That rule details the process for filing a petition asking the court to unseal grand jury material, and a number of exceptions under which releasing it can be legally justified. Courts can unseal grand jury materials for national security reasons, to help a defendant dismiss a different grand jury’s indictment or at the request of a foreign court for use in its own criminal investigation.The unsealing of grand jury materials is not a rubber-stamp process. The Florida courts refused to unseal Epstein materials until the State Legislature intervened by passing a new law. And the federal courts remain divided on whether judges have the inherent power to unseal grand jury materials, outside of the exceptions listed in Rule 6(e). In the Epstein case, Ms. Bondi cited “longstanding and legitimate” public interest in the matter, as well as case law supporting that such interest can sometimes outweigh “the countervailing interests in privacy and secrecy.”The complex limits on the release of grand jury material came briefly into the spotlight in 2019, when Congress asked a federal judge in Washington to unseal materials from a grand jury investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into possible connections between Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government. The judge refused to do so for a time, until Congress started a formal impeachment inquiry into Mr. Trump.The judge then said that inquiry meant he could unseal some grand jury material because it was needed “preliminarily to or in connection with a judicial proceeding,” the impeachment proceedings. That is one of the exceptions to grand jury secrecy included in the rules of criminal procedure.What grand juries have considered the Epstein case?Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation last year intended to remove legal obstacles to the release of evidence gathered by a Florida state grand jury that indicted Mr. Epstein for felony solicitation of prostitution in 2006.Credit...Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich/EPA, via ShutterstockCourts have convened several grand juries that heard evidence relating to Mr. Epstein’s alleged crimes. The first was a Florida state grand jury in Palm Beach County that indicted Mr. Epstein for felony solicitation of prostitution in 2006. Nearly 200 pages of evidence gathered by that grand jury was made public last year, after Florida passed a law known as the “Epstein grand jury bill,” intended to remove legal obstacles to its release.In July 2019, another grand jury, this one federal, indicted Mr. Epstein for sex trafficking in New York. Mr. Epstein died at the Metropolitan Correctional Center before a trial could be held; a Justice Department investigation found that he died by suicide.Yet another grand jury that heard Epstein-related evidence indicted Ms. Maxwell in 2020. She was later found guilty of conspiring with Mr. Epstein to abuse young girls.Ms. Bondi’s filings request the release of grand jury transcripts from both Ms. Maxwell’s case and Mr. Epstein’s. In those filings, she said a similar motion would be filed in the Southern District of Florida, where prosecutors investigated Mr. Epstein before state charges were filed.What would be the process for unsealing the Epstein grand jury material?The Justice Department has already taken the first step, by formally filing two petitions in the Southern District of New York, where both Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell were charged. In the Epstein case, the petition was submitted to Judge Richard M. Berman, who was nominated to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton, and who was overseeing Mr. Epstein’s case in the weeks before his death.Judge Berman can now give the parties in the case the opportunity to be heard, and possibly other interested parties such as Mr. Epstein’s victims and media organizations. If he then rules to unseal some grand jury material, it would be up to him to decide what documents to make public. In its filings, the Justice Department said it would redact “victim-identifying information” as well as “other personal identifying information” before release.Would the release of the Epstein grand jury material answer the public’s questions around the case?Almost certainly not. The Epstein case has spawned countless conspiracy theories and a number of legitimate questions as well.Typically, grand jury testimony is neither exhaustive nor fully granular in its detail. It would not include all of the investigative material the F.B.I. seized during its investigation of Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell, such as the trove of photos found inside a locked safe at his Manhattan townhouse after he was arrested.Instead, it is intended to provide sufficient backup to persuade jurors that there is probable cause that the person under investigation committed a crime. So the best preview of what the testimony might contain is the two indictments against Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell.Those indictments have a narrow focus around Mr. Epstein’s paying underage girls to exploit them sexually, and Ms. Maxwell’s role in facilitating and sometimes participating in the abuse. They do not address Mr. Epstein’s finances or his extensive network of wealthy and prominent friends.Benjamin Weiser contributed reporting.