• On Tuesday, Paramount settled a lawsuit Donald Trump filed as a private citizen with a $16 million payout.
• On Thursday, Trump's administration approved Paramount's sale to Skydance.
• You don't have to fill in the blanks on this one. And we're very likely to see transactions like this in the future.

Want to do business in the United States?

Pay up. More specifically: Pay Donald Trump.

That's a reasonable lesson to draw from the Paramount-Skydance deal, which received formal government approval Thursday and should finally close in the coming weeks — about 1.5 years after it first kicked off.

We don't know how Skydance's David Ellison, who is buying Paramount with the backing of his father, Larry Ellison, will run the company. Maybe he'll be able to turn the company around, and years from now we'll note how he made a savvy purchase of a distressed asset at a fire-sale price. Maybe it continues to decline. Maybe he ends up flipping it to someone bigger in short order.

But the most important thing is the thing that was clear back in January, when Donald Trump started his second term as president: If current owner Shari Redstone wanted to sell the company to Ellison, she would need to cut Trump a check.

That happened on Tuesday, when Paramount's current management formally settled a lawsuit Trump filed against the company last year. They paid $16 million, most of which is ostensibly earmarked for Trump's future presidential library.

And on Thursday, the deal got formal approval from the Federal Communications Commission, run by Brendan Carr, a Trump loyalist who sometimes wears a pin in the shape of Trump's head on his suit.

In theory, the Trump lawsuit and Carr's approval were separate events. In reality, it would be very hard to find anyone who believes that. (I've asked Carr for comment.)

This is a story that has kicked up a lot of attention in the home stretch. Some of the angles are most definitely real, and concerning. Like the fact that Carr's blessing comes with pledges from Ellison to do things like "root out bias" in CBS's news coverage, which sounds very much like a company promising to cover news in a way that pleases Carr and his boss.

Some of the angles are much muddier: While we've yet to see any actual evidence that Paramount canceled Stephen Colbert's late-night show to get the deal done, it's reasonable for people to jump to that conclusion. (Over at The Ankler, veteran TV reporter Lesley Goldberg makes a compelling argument that the cancellation had everything to do with business, and nothing to do with Trump.)

We also don't know whether the Ellisons have also agreed to give Trump $16 million or $20 million in other goodies as part of the deal, as Trump has claimed at various times. (Paramount has said it has no knowledge of extra payments; team Ellison hasn't commented.)

But the main point is the main point, which we've known for many months: Last fall, Trump filed a suit against Paramount over the editing of a "60 Minutes" interview with Kamala Harris. In any other world, that suit would go nowhere. But then Trump was elected, and started getting Very Big Companies like Disney and Meta to pay him to settle other suits he would normally have little chance of winning. (Like Paramount, those settlements were made directly to him, via his future library — as opposed to other settlements he is extracting from institutions like colleges and law firms, which are paying the federal government.)

So it was clear that Paramount would have to do the same thing, or it couldn't do the Skydance deal.

Again: In theory, the "60 Minutes" suit had nothing to do with Trump's role as president of the United States — he filed it as a private citizen, prior to his inauguration.

In reality, the only reason Paramount settled it was because he's president of the United States — and one that's willing to use that power to insert himself into day-to-day business deals.

Hard to believe this will be the last one where that happens.

• The House Ethics Committee closed its probe into Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.
• The panel found that the congresswoman "impermissibly accepted gifts."
• They asked her to pay nearly $3,000 of her own money in order to close the matter.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's appearance at the 2021 Met Gala ended up being more expensive for her than she might've thought.

The House Ethics Committee on Friday closed its yearslong probe into the New York congresswoman and whether she accepted improper gifts in connection with her attendance at the high-profile event, where she wore a white dress emblazoned with the phrase "Tax the Rich."

In a 31-page report, the panel said that Ocasio-Cortez had "impermissibly accepted gifts" and said that in order for the matter to be closed, she would need to pay nearly $3,000 in personal funds.

That includes $250 to cover the attendance of her fiancé, Riley Roberts, and an additional $2,733.28 payment to Brother Vellies, the business that designed her dress.

Her chief of staff, Mike Casca, told BI in a statement that she would make those payments.

"The Congresswoman appreciates the Committee finding that she made efforts to ensure her compliance with House Rules and sought to act consistently with her ethical requirements as a Member of the House," Casca said. "She accepts the ruling and will remedy the remaining amounts, as she's done at each step in this process."

The committee said that Ocasio-Cortez had taken proactive steps to comply with House Ethics rules, which include strict guidelines around accepting gifts. She nonetheless fell short, though the committee said it had no evidence that she "intentionally underpaid for any goods or services received in connection with the Met Gala."

The report said that the congresswoman's attempts to comply with the gift rules included arranging to rent the dress and accessories that she was provided with and to pay for other services out of pocket, which are usually provided to Met Gala guests for free.

However, the committee said that her fiancé's attendance was an impermissible gift because he is not yet her spouse, and that she initially failed to pay the full fair market value for some of the items she wore.

According to the report, Ocasio-Cortez and Roberts have already paid a total of $6,853.75 for various services they received that night, including transportation, clothing rental, and rooms at the Carlyle Hotel.

Correction: July 25 — An earlier version of this story misstated the name of Ocasio-Cortez's fiancé. It is Riley Roberts, not Riley Rogers.

At an AI and fossil fuel lovefest in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania last week, President Donald Trump - flanked by cabinet members and executives from major tech and energy giants like Google and ExxonMobil - said that "the most important man of the day" was Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin. "He's gonna get you a permit for the largest electric producing plant in the world in about a week, would you say?" Trump said to chuckles in the audience. Later that week, the Trump administration exempted coal-fired power plants, facilities that make chemicals for semiconductor manufacturing, and certain other industrial sites from Biden-era a …

Read the full story at The Verge.

• Elon Musk's xAI recently announced "Grok for Government."
• They AI company already has a contract with the Pentagon and could contract with other agencies.
• A White House spokesperson suggested on Wednesday that Trump doesn't support that.

President Donald Trump may be at odds with his own administration over Elon Musk's AI company.

When White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked by a reporter on Wednesday whether the president supported federal agencies contracting with Musk's xAI, she indicated that he does not.

"I don't think so, no," Leavitt replied.

That's despite the Department of Defense recently announcing a contract of up to $200 million with the company.

"I'll talk to him about it," Leavitt replied when asked whether Trump would like to see existing contracts cancelled.

The White House did not respond to requests for clarification of Leavitt's comments. xAI did not immediately return a request for comment.

xAI recently launched a suite of government-focused products called "Grok for Government," saying that other federal agencies can purchase those tools through the General Services Administration.

After forging a political alliance that lasted for nearly a year, Trump and Musk's relationship blew up in early June over the tech titan's objections to the deficit impacts of the "Big Beautiful Bill."

One of Musk's other major companies, SpaceX, still has contracts with the federal government despite the feud.

• Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch have been allies for years.
• Now Trump is suing the media mogul for $10 billion.
• The case is extraordinary. But Trump and Murdoch both have reasons to settle before it gets to a courtroom.

Donald Trump threatens to sue media companies all the time. Sometimes he actually does it.

But the libel suit Trump filed against Rupert Murdoch, Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, and two Journal reporters last week — over a story the Journal published about a note Trump allegedly sent to Jeffrey Epstein — is extraordinary.

Not only is it seemingly the first time a sitting president has sued a media organization, it puts Trump in direct conflict with Murdoch — perhaps Trump's most important backer over the years, via his Fox News operation.

But just because Trump has sued Murdoch doesn't mean we'll see a verdict in the case. Multiple media and tech companies have settled similar cases with Trump since he was elected last fall.

On the face of it, Trump should have a hard time prevailing: US libel laws place the burden on a plaintiff to prove that someone has said something untrue about them, and that burden gets much steeper when that person is a public figure. Murdoch's Journal also has a long tradition of not bending when powerful people threaten it. (On Wednesday, the Journal published another Trump-Epstein story, reporting that Attorney General Pam Bondi had told Trump his name appeared multiple times in unreleased documents about the case.)

Still, we are in a different environment than we were before last November's election, and all kinds of institutions have tried to accommodate Trump. Just as important: Murdoch has backed out of fights in the past.

I ran that theory by NPR's David Folkenflik — a longtime Murdoch watcher — this week on the newest episode of my Channels podcast. (Though we spent most of our time chatting about Trump's move to pull $1 billion in funding from NPR and PBS.) Here's an edited excerpt of our conversation.

Peter Kafka: What do you think happens with this suit? Do you think it actually goes to trial? Do you think they settle?

David Folkenflik: Look. Trump — actually, his ostensible future presidential library — has received a lot of money in recent months from settlements. ABC, CBS — which had a truly flimsy case presented against it, essentially legally nonexistent — plus Meta, plus Twitter/X. But a lot of Trump's previous lawsuits have been dismissed.

It wouldn't totally surprise me if it were dismissed here, if Trump would be ultimately OK with that. Because he's gotten the huge headline out of trying to discredit The Wall Street Journal's excellent reporting teams.

It puts Rupert on notice. As well as other elements of the conservative ecosystem — that they don't get a pass, just because they're notionally seen as on his side.

Nobody has done more than Rupert Murdoch to help Trump over the past decade. Murdoch is his own power source. These are two titans.

Two titans who don't necessarily like each other. But they're transactional and they both see the value in getting something from the other one. And Rupert Murdoch does settle lawsuits — like the $787.5 million check he wrote to Dominion Voting Systems, right before that defamation case was supposed to go to trial.

Just before he was supposed to testify.

So if the current price for settling a Donald Trump lawsuit is a $16 million donation to his library, that's a nothingburger for Murdoch, right?

This is something I've been thinking about and talking about with some of Murdoch's people. We've spoken in recent days. I can't predict the future. But Murdoch seems to me like the kind of guy who fights things like this — until he doesn't. Until it's more useful for him not to.

Like if he has to go on the stand or go into depositions at the age of 94 and prepare for those things — he's probably like, "Forget it. Sixteen million? I could care less."

That said, he likes a good story. He didn't kill the Theranos story, which was an exposé by one of his reporters about a blood diagnosis company built on lies, in which he was the largest private investor. And that's to his great credit that he didn't do that.

So I would guess that the excellent legal team of the Journal and Dow Jones fights this right until the point at which it's going to be inconvenient.

Both sides have a pressure point. Trump doesn't want to go to discovery, and have to talk at great length in front of lawyers for Murdoch about his actual relationship with Epstein.

That's a pressure point.

On the other hand, if Murdoch has anything that he may think in the future is going to be in front of federal officials or regulators — like CBS and Paramount, which has its sale about to go through; like the Walt Disney Company, which perennially does — then Murdoch may say $16 million is cheap.

Let's not forget that these alliances work in both directions. Fox News has run interference for Trump pretty much since 2015.

Murdoch won benefits for that, right? The Justice Department under Trump tried to block AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner because Murdoch had kind of wanted to take over Time Warner.

And when Murdoch wanted to sell to Disney, Trump said 'Go right ahead.' He called it a "great thing."

Trump's only question the morning when he learned about the Disney acquisition of most of Fox's Hollywood assets was calling Murdoch and asking, "Are you gonna hold on to Fox News?" Murdoch says yes. Trump says congratulations.

So would you bet this settles before trial?

Although there's a part of me that believes Murdoch's gonna fight it, these guys are totally transactional. If it didn't happen to have the word "lawsuit" around it, somebody might pay something or send an email to somebody else to resolve this.

These are two billionaires colliding here. But their alliance is probably more useful to them than their fighting.

Unless Trump thinks that he needs this to feed the increasingly radicalized parts of his base that somehow has to be distracted from the idea that Trump knew Jeffrey Epstein. Which he obviously did.

• A West Point official said in December that Pete Hegseth hadn't applied to the military academy.
• Hegseth proved he had been accepted, prompting attacks from Republicans and calls to investigate.
• Internal emails released to BI show staffers had to query an "out-of-use database" to find the record.

Recently released West Point records shed new light on exactly how the December snafu over Pete Hegseth's admission to the prestigious military academy happened.

On the morning of December 11, Hegseth wrote on X that the investigative news website ProPublica was about to run a "knowingly false" story saying that he hadn't been admitted to the US Military Academy, where many of America's Army officers are trained.

ProPublica denied Hegseth's claim, saying it had simply asked Hegseth to respond to a statement by a West Point public affairs official who told the news outlet that Hegseth hadn't even applied, much less been admitted.

At the time, Hegseth and his allies used the incident to blame West Point and the media. The new records show the mistake was West Point's, which neglected to review an old archive of the academy's thousands of past applicants before the controversy took off.

Internal emails, released to Business Insider under the Freedom of Information Act, showed West Point staffers exchanging emails on December 10 about Hegseth's claim to have been admitted, after he produced a letter as proof.

"Look what they now provided??" Theresa Brinkerhoff, a public affairs official, wrote to another West Point employee.

In another email thread, an employee whose name was redacted wrote, "anyone can generate an acceptance letter...doesnt mean its legit."

"Very true," Brinkerhoff replied.

By the afternoon of the 10th, West Point staff seemed to have realized their mistake. "Hes in there," an employee whose name was redacted wrote in an email. "Its in an old archived table," the person said, typing out a line of search query language to demonstrate how the admissions record could be found.

"The record shows that he declined the offer," the employee wrote.

Hegseth ended up going to Princeton, where he studied politics, played basketball, and joined the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. He served in the Army National Guard after graduation and moved into conservative activism and media jobs.

Hegseth has been a magnet for criticism in his six months as defense secretary. His nomination to lead the Pentagon was looking uncertain last December amid allegations of alcohol abuse and mistreatment of women. Hegseth denied the claims and promised to stop drinking.

Terrence Kelley, the head of West Point's communications office, apologized to ProPublica the afternoon of the 10th. "My sincere apologies for the incorrect information," he wrote. "It was inadvertent."

Hegseth apparently didn't get the memo. He posted at 8:10 am the next day that ProPublica was about to run a false story.

Kelley told colleagues on December 11 that it was important that they get "official word" to ProPublica that Hegseth was telling the truth. "Confirming Hegseth's claim probably kills any interest Propublica has in the story but the longer we delay response, the more likely that becomes a story," he wrote.

In a later email to ProPublica, which never ran a story about Hegseth's admission, he called the flub an "honest mistake."

By the afternoon of the 11th, West Point's press office had received inquiries about Hegseth's post from eight other media outlets. That same day, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas asked the school's leadership to look into how the statement was made.

"The academy takes this situation seriously and apologizes for this administrative error," West Point told media outlets.

"Following the release of inaccurate admissions information last December, West Point implemented additional guidance for the proper review and release of any information to outside parties," Kelley, the West Point spokesperson, told BI. "We regret the error and are committed to ensuring it does not happen again."

"Reporters do their job by asking tough questions to people in power, which is exactly what happened here," a spokesperson from ProPublica said. "Responsible news organizations only publish what they can verify, which is why we didn't publish a story once Mr. Hegseth provided documentation that corrected the statements from West Point."

The Pentagon and Cotton didn't respond to requests for comment.

• The Trump administration released an "AI Action Plan" on Wednesday.
• It proposes withholding federal funding from states that have "burdensome" AI regulations.
• Republicans previously tried to ban states from regulating AI via the "Big Beautiful Bill."

The Trump administration really doesn't want states to go hard on AI regulation.

Tucked into the White House's new "AI Action Plan," released on Wednesday, is a proposal to limit AI-related federal funding to states that impose "burdensome" regulations. The plan argues that doing so would be wasteful.

At the same time, the 28-page document leaves room to allow states to continue regulating AI in some form via "prudent laws that are not unduly restrictive to innovation."

"AI is far too important to smother in bureaucracy at this early stage, whether at the state or Federal level," reads the document, which was authored by White House Crypto Czar David Sacks, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios.

The plan says that federal agencies will "consider a state's AI regulatory climate when making funding decisions" and "limit funding if the state's AI regulatory regimes may hinder the effectiveness of that funding or award."

It also recommends that the Federal Communications Commission review states' AI laws to see whether they interfere with the agency's authority.

Republicans previously tried to do a version of this via the "Big Beautiful Bill." The House version of the bill would have outright banned states from enforcing AI laws for 10 years, while a proposal by Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas would've tried to accomplish the same thing by conditioning federal funding to states.

That provision was met with internal GOP resistance and was ultimately stripped out of the bill in a 99-1 vote before it passed.

In addition to pushing for lighter regulation on AI, the administration's action plan also called for quicker development of AI data centers and the promotion of American AI technology abroad to counter Chinese influence.

The plan is likely to be received well by the tech industry broadly, which has pushed for lighter regulations.

On Wednesday, IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna praised the plan, calling it a "critical step towards harnessing AI for sustained economic growth and national competitiveness."

"IBM applauds the White House for its bold and timely AI Action Plan, which prioritizes open innovation, strengthens US technological leadership, and proposes a supportive regulatory environment for AI development and deployment," Krishna said in a statement.

Alligator Alcatraz, Florida's hastily built, $225 million-and-counting immigrant detention facility in the Everglades, is both a de facto concentration camp and a right-wing meme. President Donald Trump's most ardent supporters are willing to excuse - or are in some cases reveling in - allegations of inhumane treatment at the facility: worms in food, floors flooded with fecal water, fluorescent lights left on for 24 hours a day, and no air conditioning at night despite South Florida's relentless humidity.

To them, the whole thing is a big joke, fodder for memes that activate the base even as they turn the majority of Americans off from Tru …

Read the full story at The Verge.

When Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency took a chainsaw to the federal workforce this winter, the dust felt like it might never settle.

The administration said the initiative was designed to "streamline the Federal Government, eliminate unnecessary programs, and reduce bureaucratic inefficiency." Chaotic rollouts, weekend emails, contentious court battles, tech wunderkinds let loose, and muddled directives came to define the early months of the Trump administration's cost-cutting effort. Nobody knew what the next week might bring.

Now, as the initiative's six-month mark approaches — and a Supreme Court ruling allowed the stalled firings to proceed — many former federal workers have had time to reflect on what it all meant.

"It's always going to be part of who I am, regardless of what my jobs entail in the future," former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employee Tom Di Liberto told Business Insider. "I'll always be known as that, as part of that group of people."

In a series of conversations with BI, six former government employees spoke about their career shifts, their advice to other workers, and what life is like outside the government.

Egan Reich, 45, Department of Labor

Reich joined the Department of Labor in 2010. He worked in a variety of roles, including director of media and editorial services.

During Trump's first term, Reich said, federal workers were largely left alone to do their jobs. When the president's second term came around, the energy across federal agencies was noticeably different: Reich said that press inquiries revolved around DOGE, HR, or IT, rather than grants, policy, or enforcement.

"For a couple months, as appointees trickled in and DOGE started to make itself known, it became a very strange, paranoid, alienating experience," Reich said. "It became clear they really wanted people gone."

He accepted the agency's second deferred resignation offer in April, which allowed employees to resign while receiving pay through the fall. "There was just no way I was going to make it through four years of this," he said.

Reich is now on the job hunt, finishing up a TV pilot with his brother, and spending more time with his daughter. He's casting a wide net when it comes to communications roles, and has applied for around 25 jobs, he said. He tries hard to ensure he's not falling into self-pity.

"I'm glad that I'm not there, but I'm anxious, right? I'm just knowing I need to pay the mortgage and find a job, and hopefully it will be one where I can still spend time with my daughter."

His day-to-day hasn't changed much: He wakes up and goes to bed at the same time, and school drop-off and pick-up remain the same. His disorientation stems from something a bit more existential.

"It's been a lot more of a change in my mind and ways of looking at the world than lifestyle. Something has definitely broken. It's a lot bigger than my job," he said.

Kira Carrigan, 36, Office of Personnel Management

Carrigan started at OPM in December 2024. She had a remote job as an HR specialist.

Carrigan has been unable to search for a new role because she's moving across the country for her husband's military job. Federal jobs are especially important for military spouses, since they typically offer more scheduling and work-from-home flexibility than the private sector.

She started working at OPM on December 16, and was fired less than two months later on a mass video call.

"I miss my job and the remote work ability to allow me continued employment through my military spouse relocation," Carrigan said.

Carrigan said she refused deferred resignation both times it was offered, and she's pursuing an appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board in a last-ditch attempt to regain her federal employment.

"I do want to return, but I would have significant moral issues serving under this administration," she said. Barring a return to the federal government, she said, "I'm hoping to find something in my local city government or school district."

Rachel Brittin, 47, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Brittin started at NOAA in 2023. She coordinated with the agency's private and public sector stakeholders.

Brittin was first fired from NOAA on February 27, reinstated, and fired again on April 10.

"Losing my job at NOAA was more than a career setback — it was emotionally exhausting and deeply disorienting," Brittin said. "I poured myself into the mission, only to be abruptly cut out."

Getting fired as a probationary employee was a challenge; Brittin said she didn't have any chance to defend her record.

Brittin said she's applied to dozens of jobs, including in the private sector, and hopes to stay in communications at a mission-driven organization, but it's been hard to land anything with so many "highly qualified candidates" on the market.

Ideally, she'd stay at a science-based organization, but is open to other opportunities. Brittin sees her job in the federal workforce as an "asset," in part because she mastered in-demand skills: "Navigating complexity, staying mission-focused, working under pressure, adapting to change."

For now, she's "hanging on" financially, and her husband has a secure job that's keeping them afloat. She's tried to stay busy by taking online courses, volunteering to help friends and startups, and networking.

"Knowing others in the same boat as me has helped me feel not so alone," she said.

Tom Di Liberto, 40, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Di Liberto started at NOAA in 2023. He worked in public affairs and was a climate spokesperson.

After being fired as a probationary employee in February, Di Liberto said he was lucky to find work as a media director at a nonprofit climate organization. But getting there wasn't easy, and he knows many others are still grinding through the job hunt.

He said former federal workers should remember being fired doesn't reflect their worth and they shouldn't be afraid to discuss the reductions in force with potential employers.

"It was also a bit weird during the interview process when asked to describe yourself and why you want this job. I did not have plans of getting a new job," he said. He said he made sure to emphasize his primary mission is addressing climate change.

His job search began in February, and he started his new job in early June. He spent frugally and leaned on his wife's income to support their family. During those months, he cooked more and cut back on takeout; he also prioritized his mental health with walks and Legos.

The private sector has been an adjustment, he said. It's been odd, for example, to work with fewer people and be able to upgrade software quickly instead of over a few months. Di Liberto also estimated that the NGO jobs he was looking at paid between 20% and 40% less than his role at NOAA.

He's reminded of his past life living in DC, where he encounters others who were also let go from government jobs. Di Liberto's first grader recently brought up his father's job loss in school, where it led to a class-wide conversation, he said.

Jonathan Kamens, 55, US Digital Service

Kamens started at USDS in 2023. He was a software engineer and was detailed to a cybersecurity role at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Kamens was fired from the US Digital Service — now the US DOGE Service — in February, and he landed a new job in March working remotely for a private-sector company based in Australia. He said that he's fortunate to be getting a paycheck, but the slashing of the federal workforce continues to weigh him down.

"In micro, I have a job, I'm getting paid to work, I can support my family. But in macro, the whole world is burning," Kamens said. He added that it's difficult to live his normal life "and continue to work in a system that in many ways is disintegrating around you."

He said that he's "minimally engaged" with other colleagues who left the federal workforce because it was taking a toll on his mental health. He said public servants who are still employed with the federal government face challenges under the continued influence of DOGE.

"There is a really strong normalcy bias happening," Kamens said. "In order for them to continue to function, they have to believe that this is just another administration and it will be fine after the midterms or 2028."

Nagela Nukuna, 30, US Digital Service

Nukuna started at USDS in 2022. She advised on and implemented domestic policy, working across agencies on funding, innovation, and automation projects.

Nukuna never saw herself working for a nonprofit. But that's where she landed after she was fired from the USDS on February 14.

"I ran through most of my savings to weather that time," Nukuna said. "Luckily I was able to get a job but I did have some financial hardship and strain over that time, especially because it was just unexpected."

Her government job paid a lot less than private sector positions she'd held before, so she was in the red since taking her job at USDS. Her spending didn't drastically change after getting fired, since it was already carefully calculated.

Nukuna began to look for jobs outside the government after the election. Some of her work at USDS was related to immigration, and she thought she might be impacted by future job cuts. She said she applied to 85 jobs, mainly in the tech and AI spaces, and "got a bajillion rejections" before landing her current role at an education nonprofit a month after her firing.

Generally, Nukuna tried to use her past government work to her advantage during the job search, and said some interviewers asked if she could work with people she disagreed with politically.

"Luckily, because I started earlier, I had some leads already and people that I've been talking to, and I just went on high drive once I got fired," she said. "There was a period where I was doing like five interviews a week and all day exercises."

She said she does mental health check-ins with friends who are still working for the federal government. Nukuna said she likely would have left her USDS role voluntarily due to the mental toll it was taking on her.

Although she had previously worked in the private sector, she chose the nonprofit route this time because she was "really drawn to the mission" and the people.

• Donald Trump on Friday sued Rupert Murdoch and two Wall Street Journal reporters for defamation.
• The Journal reported Thursday that Trump wrote a "bawdy" birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein in 2003.
• If the suit doesn't settle, the discovery process could raise more questions about Trump's ties to Epstein.

President Donald Trump's latest defamation suit, filed in response to a recent story by The Wall Street Journal, could raise more questions about the president's relationship with the late financier, Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump on Friday filed the lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch, Dow Jones, News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson, and Journal reporters Khadeeja Safdar and Joseph Palazzolo.

The suit, which seeks at least $10 billion in damages, accuses the group of committing defamation by publishing an article about a suggestive letter bearing Trump's name that the Journal reported was given to Epstein on his 50th birthday in 2003. Trump has denied that he wrote the letter.

Chris Mattei, a former federal prosecutor who served as lead attorney for Sandy Hook families in their defamation suit against Alex Jones, told BI that the lawsuit has several possible paths: the defendants move to dismiss the case with a limited discovery process, they skip the motion for dismissal and move instead for an open discovery process, or they settle out of court.

In a statement after the lawsuit was filed, a Dow Jones spokesperson said, "We have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting, and will vigorously defend against any lawsuit."

Representatives for News Corp., Trump's legal team, and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

A discovery process

Damon Dunn, a First Amendment and media attorney, told BI that, in order to win his suit at trial, Trump would have to prove the story was false, damaging to his reputation, and published with constitutional or "actual" malice — a high legal standard requiring the plaintiff to prove the defendant knew the statement was false, or acted with reckless disregard for its veracity, when publishing it.

"The provenance of the 'card' appears suspect, but, even so, is it defamatory that one millionaire sent a birthday card to another in 2003 before Epstein was discovered?" Dunn said, referring to the time before Epstein had been convicted of sex crimes.

The discovery process could be limited to whether the Journal published with actual malice, even if it wrongly attributed the card to Trump, Dunn said. That would be similar to when a court dismissed actor Justin Baldoni's defamation case against The New York Times, he added.

However, Mattei said that the Journal may seek reciprocal discovery, meaning it can ask Trump to provide them with any information or evidence he has not only about the writing of the letter but also about his relationship with Epstein, even about the extent to which he may have been aware of Epstein's crimes.

"If Trump's defense is that this was false, then any evidence suggesting that he had a relationship with Epstein, the degree to which that relationship was close or not, would be relevant to the question of whether or not it's likely Trump had any sort of role in this letter," Mattei said. "And so an aggressive Wall Street Journal here would seek broad discovery about the extent of Trump's relationship with Epstein."

Dunn said it's possible the defendants may pursue a reciprocal discovery process, but it would be expensive, and Trump's relationship with Epstein would be of "questionable relevance" to the proceedings, so such a move may not be worth it in the end.

Mattei said he felt Trump's case is unlikely to have merit, describing the suit as Trump's attempt to "explore what kind of power and leverage he has over the American media." Still, the judge will decide how long the procedural elements of the case take to play out.

"There will be some period of weeks where The Wall Street Journal will be able to file its motion to dismiss if it wants to make a request for discovery, the judgment rule on that request could take a little bit more time," Mattei said. "And so if it is indeed contested, you could see the initial phase of this, including discovery, playing out over the next six months."

Trump's long history with Epstein

The suit against Murdoch and the Journal reporters comes as Trump continues to grapple with his ties to Epstein, a convicted sex offender.

Trump has said that he was friends with Epstein for more than 15 years, beginning in the 1980s. The pair were regularly seen socializing at parties, and Trump told New York Magazine in 2002 that Epstein was a "terrific guy."

Trump said in 2019 that he and Epstein had a "falling out" in 2004 after a real estate dispute, and he was "not a fan" of his former friend, The New York Times reported.

Publicly available documents related to Epstein's sex trafficking trial have not revealed any wrongdoing by Trump; his name and those of some of his family members were listed in one of Epstein's contact books, and Trump is mentioned as a passenger in flight logs for Epstein's private jets.

As part of his reelection campaign, Trump promised he would make public all the available files related to the government's investigation into Epstein's crimes. The Justice Department published an unsigned memo on July 7 that said it won't release any more "Epstein Files."

In a Saturday post on Truth Social, Trump revisited the idea of releasing more Epstein-related documents, writing that he had asked the Justice Department to "release all Grand Jury testimony with respect to Jeffrey Epstein, subject only to Court Approval."

"With that being said, and even if the Court gave its full and unwavering approval, nothing will be good enough for the troublemakers and radical left lunatics making the request," Trump said in the post. "It will always be more, more, more."

This story has been updated to clarify the legal issues.