00:01President Trump signs the Epstein bill, and now the Justice Department is on the clock.
00:06What we can actually expect in these next 30 days.
00:09Plus, a meeting that was not on the calendar.
00:11The president agreeing to sit down with New York mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani.
00:16And Border Patrol's new eyes on the road.
00:18A massive camera network tracking drivers nationwide.
00:22Is it safety or scary surveillance?
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.
00:39Good morning, I'm Craig DeGrelli.
00:41The clock is officially ticking this morning.
00:44President Trump has signed the bill ordering the Justice Department to release all of its Jeffrey Epstein files.
00:50And the government now has 30 days to make them public.
00:52The law is sweeping.
00:54It requires the DOJ to turn over every record tied to Epstein, including internal communications and documents related to the investigation into his death in federal custody back in 2019.
01:07The only exceptions, information that identifies victims or interferes with ongoing investigations.
01:13What the government can't do is hold anything back because it's embarrassing, politically sensitive, or damaging to reputations.
01:21The law also requires a second report within 15 days explaining every redaction.
01:27So we have released 33,000, over 33,000 Epstein documents to the Hill and will continue to follow the law and to have maximum transparency.
01:39On Truth Social, Trump called the focus on the files a distraction from what he describes as Republican victories, and again insisting Democrats have deeper ties to Epstein than he does, writing, perhaps the truth about these Democrats and their associations with Jeffrey Epstein will soon be revealed.
01:58And the fallout from last week's email release continues.
02:01Former Treasury Secretary and Harvard professor Larry Summers announced he's taking a leave from teaching and stepping down from the Board of OpenAI and other positions days after his emails with Epstein surfaced.
02:14Earlier this week, Summers said he would only scale back his public commitments.
02:19He's now pulling back much further.
02:21President Trump says he will meet with New York City Mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani at the White House tomorrow.
02:28He isn't exactly rolling out the red carpet using a Truth Social post to say the meeting was at, quote,
02:34Communist Mayor Mamdani's request as he prepares to take over as the leader of the nation's largest city.
02:41A spokesperson for Mamdani says it's customary for New York's incoming mayor to sit down with the president.
02:46And he says Mamdani plans to press Trump on public safety, economic security, and the affordability agenda that more than a million New Yorkers voted for two weeks ago.
02:56The meeting comes after months of tension.
02:59Trump has been openly critical of Mamdani ever since he defeated former Governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary,
03:06even threatening to withhold federal funding if Mamdani won the mayor's race.
03:10The Associated Press is reporting that U.S. Border Patrol has quietly built a mass surveillance network using license plate cameras to track drivers and flag suspicious behavior.
03:23The AP reports the program, called the Predictive Intelligence Program, operates along both the southern and northern borders and has now expanded into large cities.
03:33What started as a tool to spot drug trafficking and illegal crossings has grown as the Trump administration leans on Border Patrol for immigration crackdowns,
03:42including recent deployments in Chicago and Charlotte.
03:45The system scans license plates, analyzes driving patterns, and can flag vehicles as suspicious, leading to traffic stops even for minor violations.
03:55In a statement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it uses license plate readers responsibly to, quote,
04:02identify threats and disrupt criminal networks.
04:06A major reversal from the Social Security Administration to tell you about,
04:11and one that could spare hundreds of thousands of older Americans from losing disability benefits.
04:16The agency is abandoning plans to rewrite how disability claims are judged
04:21after a wave of backlash that reached all the way to the Trump White House.
04:25That's according to new reporting from The Washington Post.
04:28At the center of it, an effort to remove age as a factor in deciding whether someone can still work.
04:34Advocates warned it would hit people over 50 the hardest, the very group the program was designed to protect.
04:40That proposal was just days away from being published,
04:43But The Post reports that SSA Commissioner Frank Bonsignano has pulled the plug,
04:49telling disability advocates the rule is not moving forward.
04:52Politically, too, this was becoming a problem.
04:55Cutting disability roles would have undercut President Trump's repeated promise not to touch Social Security.
05:01For now, the agency is not commenting,
05:03but advocates are calling this a relief for older Americans who depend on these benefits just to stay afloat.
05:09This morning, a big shakeup in podcast land.
05:12Apple is out with its year-end rankings,
05:15and the Joe Rogan experience has officially knocked The Daily off the top spot.
05:20Rogan takes number one, followed by The Daily at number two,
05:23and a surprise number three, the Mel Robbins podcast,
05:26which wasn't even in the top ten last year.
05:29Crime Junkie and Dateline hold steady in the top five,
05:32showing America's appetite for true crime is not going anywhere.
05:35Call Her Daddy cracked the list, as did the Ezra Klein show.
05:39And Rogan is still dominating on YouTube.
05:41His two-hour marathons draw millions of views a week.
05:45Apple says this year's breakouts also include celebrity hangout shows,
05:49like Amy Poehler's Good Hang, and Kylie Kelsey's Not Gonna Lie,
05:53which debuted at number two among new shows.
05:56And hey, maybe next year, Unbiased Updates will make that top ten.
06:00Hey, stranger things have happened, and we know you're listening,
06:02and hopefully watching, and we say thank you.
06:05Finally this morning, I love this story.
06:08Sometimes one image cuts through the chaos and reminds us what resilience looks like.
06:14Take a look.
06:15You might remember this viral photo from the Palisades fire back in January.
06:19A single bright blue 1977 Volkswagen van, you can't miss it right there,
06:25called Azul, standing untouched while everything around it was reduced to rubble and ash.
06:31A snapshot of the devastation with one stubborn splash of color, refusing to give in.
06:37Well, get this, Azul is back, restored, repainted, reborn.
06:42Volkswagen's class car team in Oxnard spent months rebuilding the van piece by piece,
06:48replacing melted parts, scrubbing out the smoke, bringing back the shine that the fire tried to steal.
06:54Azul goes on display later today at the L.A. Auto Show.
06:58How about that? Not as a collector's item, but as something simpler.
07:02Proof that even when everything around burns, something can still stand,
07:07something can still survive, and sometimes can even come back brighter.
07:12Wow.
07:13By the way, I was thinking, do you think they would be offended
07:16if I went to that car show and asked to see the Carfax report, right?
07:20It would probably be pretty long, or perhaps just one word.
07:25Nostalgic. Think about that.
07:27All right, here's what else we're tracking today.
07:30The government's long data drought finally breaks at nine
07:33when the Labor Department drops its delayed September jobs report.
07:37Markets are bracing for modest gains.
07:39At 11, Washington pauses to honor former Vice President Dick Cheney
07:42with a funeral service at the National Cathedral.
07:45Former President Joe Biden will attend,
07:47and former President George W. Bush will give a tribute.
07:50This afternoon, a federal judge in Maryland weighs the fate of Kilmar Abrego-Garcia's
07:55deportation fight to Liberia.
07:58Later today, in Alabama, a high-stakes vote on restricting transgender-themed books
08:03in the state's public libraries.
08:05A cultural flashpoint back in the spotlight there.
08:09Get all of the news?
08:10None of the nonsense.
08:11Sign up for our Unbiased Updates newsletter at san.com slash newsletters.
08:16Those are your Unbiased Updates for this Thursday.
08:18Thanksgiving, not far off.
08:20We'll see you back here tomorrow, Friday.
08:22We love that.
08:22For all of us here at Straight Arrow News, I'm Craig DiGrelli.
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