Famed Donald Trump biographer Michael Wolff is suing the first lady for defamation.

Wolff’s work includes four books on the sitting president as well as extensive interviews with Jeffrey Epstein prior to the pedophilic sex trafficker’s jailhouse suicide. But Wolff, whose latest project focuses on Melania, appears to have crawled right under the first lady’s skin.

The first lady, per Wolff, is demanding he apologize for suggesting that she is covertly involved in the administration’s response to Trump’s bungled Epstein scandal—or else face a $1 billion lawsuit.

Jumping out in front of Melania’s legal threat, the bestselling author filed a 15-page civil defamation suit late Tuesday in the New York Supreme Court, arguing that Melania’s attempts to silence him in a lawsuit of her own were not legally justifiable.

“It is not defamatory to say that Mrs. Trump is actively managing the present White House response to the controversy. Nor is it defamatory to say that Mrs. Trump was involved in Epstein’s rather expansive social circle,” Wolff wrote.

Wolff also argues that his statements, in proper context, qualify as protected opinions based on the available facts. He also claimed that the first lady’s attorneys would not be able to win a defamation case since they would not be able to prove the required burden of actual malice, a legal standard requiring evidence that Wolff did not believe his own statements to be true.

“Several days ago I was notified by lawyers for the First Lady that they intend to sue me for a billion dollars for some of those statements,” Wolff said in a video statement posted to Instagram, deriding Melania’s efforts to control similar reports as meritless “SLAPP suits.”

“I can’t live like that,” Wolff continued, situated on the porch of his beachside Hamptons home. “In fact, to be perfectly honest, I’d like nothing better than to get Donald Trump and Melania Trump under oath, in front of a court reporter, and actually find out all of the details of their relationship with Epstein.”

Blue states are fighting fire with fire, flaming the Trump administration for the ongoing government shutdown by adapting the president’s home-cooked messaging strategy.

For weeks, federal websites have displayed messages overtly blaming the shutdown on Democrats in Congress, in an apparent violation of the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch and the 1939 Hatch Act, which are designed to limit partisan messaging from federal employees.

In a massive reversal of the White House’s shutdown blame game, at least three states have now posted notices to their state government websites informing residents that the ongoing shutdown was entirely Republicans’ fault.

“Because Republicans in Washington D.C., failed to pass a federal budget, causing the federal government shutdown, November 2025 SNAP benefits cannot be paid. Starting October 16, SNAP benefits will not be paid until the federal government shutdown ends and funds are released to PA,” a banner on the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services website reads.

Illinois issued a similar message, further pinning the blame on “federal officials with the Trump Administration.”

“SNAP customers will not receive November food benefits—unless there is further action from the Trump administration to reopen the government,” the website for the Illinois Application for Benefits Eligibility said.

California, whose governor played his own imitation game against Trump this summer, also jumped on the bandwagon. In a note on the California Health and Human Services Agency website, the state government blamed the shutdown on the “failures of the President and Congress.”

The government has been shut down for more than 21 days as of Wednesday, making it the second-longest federal closure in U.S. history. It’s only bested by a 35-day shutdown between 2018 and 2019, during Donald Trump’s first term.

Both national political parties are hung up on how to fund Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget, which included details to slice billions from Obamacare subsidies and Medicaid.

Democrats—and their constituents—have insisted that party representatives hold firm until they can find a way to salvage the subsidized health care programs. But a major hitch looms on the horizon: Open enrollment for Obamacare plans begins on November 1. If the shutdown is not resolved by then, millions of Americans will be forced to make a decision about their health coverage without knowing whether premiums will come down or not.

Is Florida trying to hide how many U.S. citizens have been detained as part of Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants?

The Miami New Times reported Wednesday that the Florida State Board of Immigration Enforcement removed the number of U.S. citizens arrested as part of law enforcement’s sweeping deportation efforts from its website, after the publication asked the state why citizens were being arrested in the first place.

As of October 14, Florida’s Suspected Unauthorized Alien Encounters Dashboard had recorded the arrests of 21 U.S. citizens and another nine who had encounters with law enforcement but were not arrested, according to the Times. After the outlet reached out to the board, the figure vanished. The Times reported the dashboard now shows that U.S. citizens have had two encounters and only one arrest.

The Times reached out to the board, as well as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Governor Ron DeSantis’s office about the change, but received no response.

Last week, ProPublica reported that more than 170 U.S. citizens have been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including 20 children.

Since August 1, immigration authorities in Florida have recorded more than 5,800 encounters and made 4,700 arrests. Of those arrests, more than 2,400 have been conducted by state and local law enforcement operating federal immigration powers under a 287(g) agreement.

Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner has been under fire this week after revelations that he has a skull tattoo associated with Germany’s Nazi Party on his chest. On Wednesday, he announced that it has been covered up.

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