00:01Congress finally greenlights the Epstein files.
00:04A 30-day countdown now begins, and what's about to come could shake more than just Washington.
00:10Plus, a sharp exchange in the Oval Office.
00:12Donald Trump and the Saudi Crown Prince pressed on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
00:17And a stunning failure to communicate why no one alerted Baltimore bridge workers
00:21that a massive ship was barreling toward them.
00:24The stories that matter, clear and credible, from across the country to around the world.
00:33These are your unbiased updates from Straight Arrow News.
00:38Good morning, I'm Craig DeGrelli.
00:40America is waking up this morning waiting for one more thing.
00:43President Donald Trump's signature, the final step that will force the release of all Jeffrey Epstein case files.
00:50Once he signs it into law, the clock starts.
00:52Within 30 days, every record, every communication, and any material related to the investigation into Epstein,
01:00including his death in federal custody, must be made public.
01:03The House passed the measure in a landslide Tuesday,
01:06a bipartisan breakthrough that took months and a special election in Arizona to get across the finish line.
01:13And late Tuesday, the Senate cleared the bill by unanimous consent.
01:16No objections, no debate, sending it straight to the president's desk.
01:20Only one member of Congress voted nay, Louisiana Republican Clay Higgins.
01:25In a post on X, Higgins said the bill's wording could reveal and injure thousands of innocent people,
01:32including witnesses, people who provided alibis, and family members.
01:36House Speaker Mike Johnson did try earlier in the day to get the Senate to amend the language
01:41to better protect victims' identities.
01:43For survivors of Epstein's abuse, this vote is a watershed moment, something they've spent years fighting for,
01:50and many say they would not be here without one woman.
01:54And so I am thinking about so many women as I am here today.
01:57And most of all, you know, I am thinking about Virginia Roberts-Gufresne.
02:09We would not be here without her.
02:11There is no doubt in my mind about that.
02:13And, you know, I very much, I think, like many people, you know, there were fights going on.
02:22There were definitely women that had, you know, worked so hard for so long for justice,
02:26but I had, you know, given up on the idea that anything would happen in this case.
02:32Virginia Giuffre died by suicide in April, but her memoir, Nobody's Girl, was published posthumously just last month.
02:40President Trump says he will sign the bill once it reaches his desk,
02:44a sharp reversal after months of his administration working to block the file's release.
02:49In the past 24 hours, President Trump rolled out the red carpet for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman,
02:56his first visit to the White House since the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
03:00And the moment that stole the show wasn't the F-35 jet deal or even the billion-dollar business agreements.
03:07It was the answer the president gave to a reporter's question,
03:11a question directed at both him and the crown prince.
03:14This moment right here. Watch.
03:16Your Royal Highness, the U.S. intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist.
03:229-11 families are furious that you are here in the Oval Office.
03:25Who are you with?
03:26Why should Americans trust you?
03:27Who are you with?
03:27And the same to you, Mr. President.
03:28Now, who are you with?
03:29I'm with ABC News, sir.
03:30You're with who?
03:31ABC News, sir.
03:32Fake news. ABC fake news.
03:34He's one of the worst in the business, but I'll answer your question.
03:37As far as this gentleman is concerned, he's done a phenomenal job.
03:41You're mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial.
03:45A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about.
03:48Whether you like him or didn't like him, things happen.
03:51But he knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that.
03:54You don't have to embarrass our guests by asking a question like that.
03:56The gentleman he's referring to is Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist murdered and dismembered in 2018.
04:05A killing U.S. intelligence says MBS himself approved.
04:09As you heard, President Trump defended the crown prince and brushed off the CIA's findings.
04:15Bin Salman then called the killing painful and a, quote, huge mistake, saying Saudi Arabia did all the right steps afterwards.
04:22That tense moment capped a day full of honors, flyovers, red carpets, a black-tie dinner,
04:28all as the president promises to sell Saudi Arabia F-35 fighter jets for the first time ever.
04:35Khashoggi's widow told Britain's Sky News after the Oval Office meeting that it was, quote,
04:40shameful to ask reporters not to press the crown prince on the killing,
04:44and that she wishes she could have introduced her husband to him.
04:48To a different topic now, the Trump administration's immigration crackdown is moving deeper into the South.
04:55After weekend raids in North Carolina, CBS News now reports Border Patrol is preparing to send
05:01about 200 agents to New Orleans in the next two weeks.
05:05Armored vehicles and special operations teams could be seen rolling into the Big Easy by December 1st.
05:11CBS says the New Orleans operation is part of the same enforcement push that swept through Charlotte,
05:16where federal agents arrested more than 100 people, and local leaders and protesters pushed back,
05:22saying the tactics fueled fear and confusion there.
05:25But New Orleans presents a different political landscape.
05:28The city has a Democratic mayor, but a Republican governor, Jeff Landry, who's a close ally of President Trump.
05:35Back in June, Landry signed a bill pledging Louisiana's full cooperation with federal immigration enforcement,
05:42including support for detentions and deportations.
05:44A searing emotional update in Washington Tuesday on one of the most consequential and costly infrastructure failures
05:53in modern U.S. history that happened in May of last year.
05:57The NTSB laying out in stark detail what went wrong the morning a cargo ship named the Dolly
06:03slammed into Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge,
06:06and what could have prevented the deaths of six workers who were patching potholes.
06:10Investigators walked through the timeline, saying those workers would have had one minute and 29 seconds to escape,
06:18but they were never warned.
06:20Police stationed on the bridge did not call the construction inspector, despite having his number,
06:26leaving crews with no idea the powerless ship was drifting straight toward them.
06:31The NTSB chair didn't mince words.
06:33This tragedy should have never occurred.
06:38Lives should have never been lost.
06:41As with all accidents that we investigate, this was preventable.
06:48Investigators laid out a chain of failures, starting with a single loose wire that triggered an initial blackout on the cargo ship,
06:55resulting in the loss of steering control, remember the scene, and a fuel pump set up that starved the ship of power in the seconds just before impact.
07:05They say the crew had swapped in cheaper flushing pumps months earlier, and the ship's operator likely knew about it.
07:12The NTSB also blasted the Maryland Transportation Authority for never assessing the bridge's vulnerability to a major ship strike,
07:20something safety groups have pushed nationwide for for decades.
07:23The Washington Post reports that Maryland now expects the rebuilt key bridge to cost as much as $5.2 billion
07:31and take until 2030 to reopen, more than double the state's early estimate.
07:36The Trump administration is taking its first major steps toward dismantling the U.S. Department of Education,
07:43a signature campaign promise now moving into action.
07:46The administration announced six new interagency agreements Tuesday,
07:50formally starting the process of breaking up the department and redistributing its core functions across the federal government.
07:57Under the plan, the Department of Labor will now co-manage major K-12 and higher education programs,
08:05including elementary and secondary education initiatives and several higher education grant programs.
08:10The Interior Department will take over the Office of Indian Education.
08:15Health and Human Services will absorb child care access,
08:18which funds on-campus child care for student parents, along with foreign medical accreditation.
08:24The State Department is set to take control of international and foreign language education.
08:29It's still unclear when these agreements officially take effect.
08:32Finally this morning, a rare Gustav Klimt portrait with a remarkable survival story just shattered records at auction.
08:41Gustav Klimt's portrait of Elizabeth Lederer sold for, get this, $236.4 million
08:47after a 20-minute bidding war at Sotheby's in New York on Tuesday,
08:53setting a new record as the second most expensive piece of modern art ever sold at auction.
08:58You see it there?
08:59The six-foot-tall portrait was painted between 1914 and 1916,
09:05and its history is just as extraordinary as its price tag.
09:09Follow me here.
09:10When Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938,
09:14the Lederer family's vast art collection was looted,
09:17but their portraits were left behind, deemed too Jewish to be worth selling.
09:22That's according to the National Gallery of Canada.
09:24Elizabeth Lederer survived by claiming that Klimt, who wasn't Jewish, was her father.
09:31With help from her former brother-in-law, a high-ranking Nazi official,
09:35she obtained documents stating she descended from the artist,
09:39a lie that protected her and allowed her to remain in Vienna until her death in 1944.
09:45Wow, what a back story.
09:48All right, a packed Wednesday ahead.
09:50Here's what we're tracking.
09:51At noon, First Lady Melania Trump and Second Lady Usha Vance head to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina,
09:57spending time with Marines and their families as the holidays approach.
10:01Also at noon, President Trump travels to the Kennedy Center for the U.S.-Saudi Business Forum,
10:06a high-stakes meeting as Washington and Riyadh deepen economic ties.
10:10At two, the Federal Reserve drops last month's meeting minutes,
10:15giving us new clues on interest rates after two straight cuts.
10:19At three, NASA unveils brand-new images of that interstellar comet that buzzed past Mars,
10:25only the third known visitor from another star.
10:29We're the fastest, fairest few minutes in news.
10:31Be sure to tell your friends about us.
10:33You can always watch us on SAN.com or our app, or stream us on Spotify.
10:37Those are your unbiased updates for this Wednesday.
10:40We'll see you back here tomorrow.
10:42For all of us here at Straight Arrow News, I'm Craig DeGrelli.
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